UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA 


THE 


ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 


WITH   INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTES 

BY 

ALFRED   AINGER 


29818 


3Lontion 

MACMILLAN   AND   CO.,  Limited 

NEW  YORK  :   THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1898 

All  rights  reserved 


This  Edition  of  the  Essays  of  Elia  -was  first  printed  in  1883 
Reprinted  1884,  1887,  1888,  1889,  1891,  1892,  .1894,  1896,  1898 


2112 


PR 
At 


INTRODUCTION. 

The  two  vohmies  of  miscellaneous  writings  by  Charles 
Lamb,  i^ublished  by  the  Olliers  in  1818,  contained  a 
variety  of  prose  sufficient  to  prove  once  more  that  the 
study  and  practice  of  verse  is  one  of  the  best  trainings 
for  a  prose  style.  In  his  dedication  of  the  poetical  volume 
to  Coleridge,  Lamb  half  apologises  for  having  forsaken 
his  old  calling,  and  for  having  "  dmndled  into  prose  and 
criticism."  The  apologj-,  as  I  have  elsewhere  remarked, 
was  hardly  needed.  If  we  except  the  lines  to  Hester 
Savary  and  a  few  of  the  sonnets  and  shorter  pieces,  there 
was  little  in  the  volume  to  weigh  against  the  two  essays 
on  Hogarth  and  the  tragedies  of  Shakspeare.  It  was 
the  result  of  the  miscellaneous  and  yet  thorough  character 
of  Lamb's  reading  from  a  boy  that  the  critical  side  of  his 
mind  was  the  fii'st  to  mature.  The  shorter  papers  con- 
tributed by  Lamb  to  Leigh  Hunt's  Reflector  in  1811 — 
the  year  to  which  belong  the  two  critical  essays  just 
mentioned — more  or  less  framed  on  the  model  of  the 
Teitler  and  its  successors,  give  by  comparison  little  pro- 
mise of  the  richness  and  variety  of  the  Elia  series  of  ten 
years  later.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  passages  in  the 
t-ritical  essays,  such  as  that  on  Lear,  as  represented  on 
the  stage,  and  the  vindication  of  Hogarth  as  a  moral 
teacher,  which  represent  Lamb  at  his  highest. 

On  the  republication  of  these  miscellanies  in  1818,  it 
could  not  be  overlooked  that  a  prose  wi'iter  of  something 
like  genius  was  coming  to  the  front.  One  of  the  yoimger 
critics  of  the  day,  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge,  reviewing  the 


VI  INTRODUCTION. 

volumes  iu  the  fifth  number  of  the  Etonian,  in  1821, 
does  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  "  Charles  Lamb  writes 
the  best,  tlie  purest,  and  most  genuine  English  of  any 
man  living,"  and  adds  tlie  following  acute  remark : — 
"  For  genuine  Anglicism,  which  amongst  all  other  essen- 
tials of  excellence  in  our  native  literature,  is  now  recover- 
ing itself  from  the  leaden  mace  of  the  Rambler,  he  is 
quite  a  study ;  his  prose  is  absolutely  perfect,  it  conveys 
thought,  without  smothering  it  iu  blankets."  Lamb  was 
indeed  to  do  more  than  any  man  of  his  time  to  remove 
the  Johnsonian  incubus  from  our  periodical  literature. 
But  the  full  scope  of  the  writer's  powers  was  not  known, 
perhaps  even  to  himself,  till  the  opportunity  afforded  him 
by  the  establishment  of  the  London  Magazine  iu  1820. 
It  did  credit  to  the  discernment  of  the  editors  of  that 
publication,  that  no  control  seems  to  have  been  exercised 
over  the  matter  or  manner  of  Lamb's  contributions.  The 
writer  had  not  to  see  all  that  made  the  individuality  of 
his  style  disappear  under  the  editor's  hand,  as  his  review  of 
ihe£xmi)-sion  in  the  Quarterly  had  sutlercd  under  Gilford's. 
To  "  wander  at  its  own  sweet  will "  was  the  fii-st  neces- 
sity of  Lamb's  genius.  And  this  miscellaueousness  of 
suliject  and  treatment  is  the  first  sm-prise  and  delight 
felt  by  the  reader  of  Lamb.  It  seems  as  if  the  choice  of 
subject  came  to  him  almost  at  haj^hazard,— as  if,  like 
Shakspeare,  he  found  the  fu"st  plot  that  came  to  hand 
suitable,  because  the  hand  that  was  to  deal  with  it  was 
absolutely  secure  of  its  power  to^  transmute  the  most 
unpromising  material  into  gold.  (  Roast  Pig,  The  Praise 
of  Chimney-sweepers,  A  Bachelor's  Comiolaint  of  the  Con- 
duct of  Married  People,  Grace  before  Meat — the  incon- 
gruity of  the  titles  at  once  declares  the  humorist's 
confidence  iu  the  certainty  of  his  touch.  To  have  been 
commonplace  on  such  tojncs  would  have  been  certain 
failure. 

In  the  Character  of  the  late  Elia,  by  a  Friend, 
which.  Lamb  wrote  iu  the  interval  between  the  publica- 
tion of  the  first  and  second  series  of  essays,  he  hits  off 


INTRODUCTION.  Vll 

tlie  characteristics  of  his  style  in  a  tone  half  contemptuous, 
half  apologetic,  which  yet  contains  a  criticism  of  real  value. 
"  I  am  now  at  liberty  to  confess,"  he  writes,  "  that  much 
which  I  have  heard  objected  to  my  late  friend's  writings 
was  well  founded.  Crude,  they  are,  I  grant  you — a  sort 
of  unlicked,  incondite  things — villainously  pranked  in  an 
affected  array  of  antique  words  and  phrases.  They  had 
not  been  his,  if  they  had  been  other  than  such ;  and 
better  it  is  that  a  writer  shoidd  be  natural  in  a  self- 
pleasing  quaintness  than  to  affect  a  naturalness  (so  called) 
that  should  be  strange  to  him."  No  better  text  coidd  be 
found  from  which  to  discourse  on  Charles  Lamb's  English. 
The  plea  put  forth  almost  as  a  paradox  is  nevertheless  a 
simple  truth.  What  appears  to  the  hasty  reader  artificial 
in  Lamb's  style  was  natural  to  him.  For  in  this  matter 
of  style  he  was  the  product  of  his  reading,  and  from  a 
child  his  reading  had  lain  in  the  dramatists,  and  gener- 
ally in  the  great  imaginative  writers  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries.  Shakspeare  and  Mdton  he  knew 
almost  by  heart :  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  RLassinger, 
Ford,  and  Webster,  were  hardly  less  familiar  to  him; 
and  next  to  these,  the  writers  of  the  so-called  meta- 
physical school,  the  later  developments  of  the  Euphuistic 
fashion,  had  the  strongest  fascination  for  him.  Where 
the  Fantastic  vein  took  the  pedantic -humorous  shai^e, 
as  in  Burton ;  or  the  metaphysical  -  humorous,  as  in 
Sir  Thomas  Browne;  or  where  it  was  combined  with 
true  poetic  sensibility,  as  in  Wither  and  Marvell,— of 
these  springs  Lamb  had  drimk  so  deeply  that  his  mind 
was  satm-ated  with  them.  His  own  nature  became 
"subdued  to  what  it  worked  in."  For  him  to  bear, 
not  only  on  his  style,  but  on  the  cast  of  his  mind  and 
fancy,  the  mark  of  these  writers,  and  many  more  in 
whom  genius  and  eccentricity  went  together,  was  no 
matter  of  choice.  It  was  this  that  constituted  the  "  self- 
pleasing  quaintness  "  of  his  literary  manner.  The  phrase 
could  not  be  improved.  Affectation  is  a  manner  put  on 
to  impress  others.     Lamb's  manner  pleased  himself— and 


Vlil  INTRODUCTION. 

that  is  why,  to  use  a  familiar  jjhrase,  he  was  "  hapi^y 
in  it." 

To  one  of  the  writers  just  named  Lamb  stands  in  a 
special  relation.  Sir  Thomas  Browne  was  at  once  a 
scholar,  a  mystic,  and  a  humorist.  His  humour  is  so 
grave  that,  when  he  is  enunciating  one  of  those  paradoxes 
he  loves  so  well,  it  is  often  impossible  to  tell  whether  or 
not  he  wears  a  smile  upon  his  face.  To  Lamb  this  com- 
bination of  characters  was  irresistible,  for  in  it  he  saw  a 
reflection  of  himself  He  knew  the  writings  of  Browne 
so  well  that  not  only  does  he  quote  him  more  often  than 
any  other  author,  but  whenever  he  has  to  confront  the 
mysteries  of  life  and  death  his  mental  attitude  at  once 
assimilates  to  Browne's,  and  his  English  begins  to  dilate 
and  to  become  sombre.  The  dominant  influence  on  Lamb 
in  his  reflective  mood  is  Browne.  His  love  of  paradox, 
and  the  colour  of  his  style,  derived  from  the  use  of 
Latinised  words  never  thoroughly  acclimatised,  is  also 
from  the  same  source — a  use  which,  in  the  hands  of  a 
less  skilful  Latinist  than  Lamb,  might  have  been  hazard- 
ous. We  do  not  resent  his  use  of  such  words  as  agnize, 
arride,  reluct,  reduce  (in  the  sense  of  "bring  back"),  or 
even  such  portentous  creations  as  scienticd,  cognition,  in- 
tellectucds,  and  the  like.  Lamb  could  not  have  lived  so 
long  among  the  writers  of  the  Renascence  without  sharing 
their  fondness  for  word-coinage.  And  the  flavour  of  the 
antique  in  style  he  felt  to  be  an  almost  indispensable 
accomi^animent  to  the  antique  in  fancy. 

Another  feature  of  his  style  is  its  allusiveness.  He 
is  rich  in  quotations,  and  in  my  notes  I  have  succeeded  in 
tracing  most  of  them  to  their  source,  a  matter  of  some 
difticidty  in  Lamb's  case,  for  his  inaccuracy  is  all  but 
perverse.  But  besides  those  avowedly  introduced  as  such, 
his  style  is  full  of  quotations  held — if  the  expression  may 
be  allowed — in  solution.  One  feels,  rather  than  recognises, 
that  a  i)hrase  or  idiom  or  turn  of  expression  is  an  echo  of 
something  that  one  has  heard  or  read  before.  Yet  such 
is  the  use  made  of  his  material,  that  a  charm  is  added  by 


INTRODUCTION.  ix 

the  very  fact  that  we  are  thus  coutinually  renewing  our 
experience  of  an  older  day.  His  style  becomes  aromatic, 
like  the  perfume  of  faded  rose-leaves  in  a  china  jar. 
With  such  allusiveness  as  this,  I  need  not  say  that  I  have 
not  meddled  in  my  notes.  Its  whole  charm  lies  in  oiu' 
recognising  it  for  ourselves.  The  "  jirosperity "  of  an 
allusion,  as  of  a  jest,  "  lies  in  the  ear  of  him  that  hears 
it,"  and  it  w^ere  doing  a  poor  service  to  Lamb  or  his 
readers  to  draw  out  and  arrange  in  order  the  threads  he 
has  wrought  into  the  very  fabric  of  his  English. 

But  although  Lamb's  stjde  is  essentially  the  product 
of  the  authors  he  had  made  his  own,  nothing  would  be 
more  imtrue  than  to  say  of  him  that  he  read  natiu^e,  or 
anything  else,  "  through  the  spectacles  of  books."  Words- 
worth would  never  have  called  to  Mm  to  leave  his  books 
that  he  might  come  forth,  and  bring  with  him  a  heart 

"That  watches  and  receives." 

It  is  to  his  own  keen  insight  and  intense  sjnnpathy  that 
we  owe  everything  of  value  in  his  writing.  His  observa- 
tion was  his  own,  though  when  he  gave  it  back  into  the 
world,  the  manner  of  it  was  the  creation  of  his  reading. 
Where,  for  instance,  he  describes  (and  it  is  seldom)  the 
impression  produced  on  him  by  country  sights  and 
sounds,  there  is  not  a  trace  discoverable  of  that  con- 
ventional treatment  of  nature  which  had  been  so  common 
■with  mere  book -men,  before  Burns  and  Wordsworth. 
Lamb  did  not  care  greatly  for  the  country  and  its  associa- 
tions. Custom  had  made  the  presence  of  society,  streets 
and  crowds,  the  theatre  and  the  pictiu-e  gallery,  an 
alisolute  necessity.  Yet  if  he  has  to  reproduce  a  memory 
of  rm-al  life,  it  is  with  the  precision  and  tenderness  of  a 
Wordsworth.  Take,  as  an  example,  this  exquisite  glimpse 
of  a  summer  afternoon  at  Blakesware  : — "  The  cheeifid 
store-room,  in  whose  hot  window-seat  I  used  to  sit  and 
read  Cowley,  with  the  grass-plot  before,  and  the  hum  and 
flappings  of  that  one  solitary  wasp  that  ever  haimted  it, 
about  me — it  is  in  mine  ears  now,  as  oft  as  summer  re- 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

turns  :"  or  again,  the  sweet  garden  scene  from  Dream 
Children,  where  the  spirit  of  Wordsworth  seems  to  con- 
tend for  mastery  with  tlie  faucifidness  of  Marvell,  "  because 
I  had  more  pleasure  in  strolling  about  among  the  old 
melancholy-looking  yew-trees,  or  the  fii'S,  and  picking  up 
the  red  berries  and  the  fir  ajiples,  which  were  good  for 
nothing  but  to  look  at — or  in  lying  about  upon  the  fresh 
grass,  with  all  the  fine  garden  smells  around  me — or  bask- 
ing in  the  orangery,  till  I  could  almost  fancy  myself 
ripening  too  along  with  the  oranges  and  limes  in  that 
grateful  warmth — or  in  watching  the  dace  that  darted  to 
and  fro  in  the  fish  pond  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  with 
here  and  there  a  great  sulky  pike  hanging  midway  down 
the  water  in  silent  state,  as  if  it  mocked  at  theu'  imperti- 
nent friskings."  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  poet's 
eye  or  the  painter's  is  more  sm^ely  exhibited  here.  The 
"  solitary  wasp"  and  the  "  sulky  pike"  are  master-touches  ; 
and  in  the  following  passage  it  is  perhaps  as  much  of 
Cattermole  as  of  Goldsmith  or  Gray,  that  we  are  re- 
minded : — "  But  would'st  thou  know  the  beauty  of  holi- 
ness 1 — go  alone  on  some  week-day,  borrowing  the  keys 
of  good  Master  Sexton,  traverse  the  cool  aisles  of  some 
country  church  :  think  of  the  piety  that  has  kneeled 
there — the  meek  pastor — the  docile  parishioner.  With 
no  disturbing  emotions,  no  cross  conflicting  comparisons, 
drink  in  the  tranquillity  of  the  place,  till  thou  thyself 
become  as  fixed  and  motioidess  as  the  marble  effigies  that 
kneel  and  weep  around  thee." 

The  idea  that  sonic  readers  might  derive  from  the 
casual  titles  and  subjects  of  these  essays,  and  the  discur- 
siveness of  their  treatment,  that  they  are  hasty  things 
thrown  off  in  a  moment  of  high  spirits,  is  of  course 
erroneous.  Lamb  somewhere  writes  of  the  essay  just 
quoted,  as  a  "futile  eff"ort  wrung  from  him  with  slow 
pain."  Perhaps  this  was  an  extreme  case,  but  it  is  clear 
that  most  of  tlie  essays  are  the  result  of  careful  manipula- 
tion. They  are  elaborate  studies  in  style,  and  even  in 
coloui-.     Nothing  is  more  remarkable  about  the  essays 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 

than  the  contrasts  of  colour  tlicy  present — anotlier  illus- 
tration of  Lamb's  sjmijxithy  with  the  painters  art.  The 
essay  on  the  Chimney-^^wcepers  is  a  stndy  in  black  : — 

"  I  like  to  meet  a  sweep  —  understand  me — not  a 
grown  sweeper — old  chimney-sweepers  are  by  no  means 
attractive — but  one  of  those  tender  novices,  blooming 
through  their  first  nigritude,  the  maternal  washings  not 
quite  effaced  from  the  cheek — such  as  come  forth  with 
the  dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with  their  little  profes- 
sional notes  sounding  like  the  ;j»fep  ])eep  of  a  yoimg 
sparrow  ;  or  liker  to  the  matin  lark,  shall  I  pronoimce 
them,  in  their  aerial  ascents  not  seldom  anticii)ating  the 
sumise?  I  have  a  kindly  yearning  towards  those  dim 
specks — poor  blots — innocent  blacknesses — I  reverence 
these  young  Africans  of  our  own  growth  —  these  almost 
clergy  imps,  who  sport  their  cloth  without  assumption." 

And  if  one  would  understand  Lamb's  skill  as  a  colour- 
ist,  let  him  turn  as  a  contrast  to  the  essay  on  Quakers, 
which  may  be  called  a  study  in  dove-colom- : — "  The 
very  garments  of  a  Quaker  seem  incapable  of  receiving 
a  soil ;  and  cleanliness  in  them  to  be  something  more 
than  the  absence  of  its  contrary.  Every  Quakeress  is  a 
lily  ;  and  when  they  come  up  in  bands  to  their  Whitsun 
conferences,  whitening  the  easterly  streets  of  the  metro- 
polis, from  all  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom,  they  show 
like  troops  of  the  Shining  Ones." 

The  essay  on  Chimney-Hii'eepcrs  is  one  blaze  of  wit, 
which  yet  may  pass  unobserved  from  the  very  richness 
of  its  setting.  How  surprising,  and  at  the  same  time 
how  picturesque,  is  the  following:  —  "I  seem  to  re- 
member ha'vdDg  been  told  that  a  bad  sweep  was  once 
left  in  the  stack  with  his  brush,  to  indicate  which  way 
the  wind  blew.  It  Avas  an  awful  spectacle,  certainly,  not 
much  imlike  the  old  stage  dii-ection  in  Macbeth,  where 
the  'apparition  of  a  child  crowned,  with  a  tree  in  his 
hand,  rises.'"  Lamb's  wit,  original  as  it  is,  shows  often 
enough  the  influence  of  particular  models.  Of  all  old 
writers,  none  had  a  furmer  hold  on  his  affection  than 


Xll  INTRODUCTION. 

Fuller.  Now  and  then  he  has  jiassages  in  deliberate 
imitation  of  Fuller's  manner.  The  descriptions,  in  de- 
tached sentences,  of  the  Poor  Relation  and  the  Con- 
valescent are  Fuller  all  over.  When  Lamb  writes  of 
the  Poor  Relation — "  He  entereth  smiling  and  embar- 
rassed. He  holdeth  out  his  hand  to  you  to  shake,  and 
draweth  it  back  again.  He  casually  looketh  in  about 
dinner-time,  when  the  table  is  full," — and  so  on,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  he  had  in  mind  such  characterisation 
as  Fuller's  in  the  Good  Yeoman,  or  the  Degenerous 
Gentleman.  The  manner  is  due  originally,  of  course,  to 
Theophrastus,  but  it  was  from  Fuller,  I  think,  that  Lamb 
derived  his  fondness  for  it.  And  throughout  his  writings 
the  influence  of  this  humorist  is  to  be  traced.  How 
entirely  in  the  vein  of  Fuller,  for  instance,  is  the  follow- 
ing : — "  They  (the  sweeps),  from  their  little  pulpits  (the 
tops  of  chimneys),  preach  a  lesson  of  patience  to  man- 
kind ; "  or  this,  again,  from  the  essay  Grace  Before 
Meat: — "Gluttony  and  sm-feiting  are  no  proper  occasions 
for  thanksgiving.  When  Jeshurun  waxed  fat,  we  read 
that  he, kicked;"  or,  once  more,  this  fine  comment  on 
the  stillness  of  the  Quaker's  worship  : — "  For  a  man  to 
refrain  even  from  good  words  and  to  hold  his  peace,  it  is 
commendable  ;  but  for  a  multitude,  it  is  great  mastery." 
But  Lamb's  wit,  like  his  English,  is  Protean,  and  just 
as  we  think  we  have  fixed  its  character  and  soiu-ce,  it 
escapes  into  new  forms.  In  simile  he  finds  opiwrtunity 
for  it  that  is  all  his  o^vIl.  What,  for  instance,  can  be 
more  surprising  in  its  unexpectedness  than  the  descrip- 
tion in  The  Old  Margate  Hoy  of  the  ubiquitous  sailor  on 
board  : — "  How  busily  didst  thou  ply  thy  multifarious 
occupation,  cook,  mariner,  attendant,  chamberlain  •  here, 
there,  like  another  Ariel,  flaming  at  once  about  all  parts 
of  the  deck'"?  Again,  what  wit — or  shall  we  call  it 
humour — is  there  in  the  gravity  of  his  detail,  by  which 
he  touches  springs  of  delight  unreached  even  by  Defoe  or 
Swift ;  as  in  Boast  Pig,  where  he  says  that  the  "  father 
and  son  were  summoned  to  take  their  trial  at  Pekin,  then 


INTRODUCTION.  XIU 

an  inconsiderable  assize  toum  ;"  or  more  delightful  still, 
later  on  : — "  Thus  this  custom  of  fo-ing  houses  continued, 
till  in  process  of  time,  says  my  manuscript,  a  sage  arose, 
like  our  Locke,  who  made  a  discovery  that  the  flesh  of 
swine,  or  indeed  of  any  other  animal,  might  he  cooked 
(burnt,  as  they  called  it)  without  the  necessity  of  consum- 
ing a  whole  house  to  dress  it."  Or,  for  another  vein, 
take  the  account  of  the  mendacious  traveller  he  atfects  to 
remember  as  a  fellow-passenger  on  his  early  voyage  in 
the  old  Margate  Hoy,  who  assures  his  admiring  listeners 
that,  so  far  from  the  Phoenix  being  a  unique  bird,  it  was 
by  no  means  imcommon  "in  some  parts  of  Upper  Egypt," 
where  the  whole  episode  is  not  one  jot  the  less  humorous 
because  it  is  clear  to  the  reader,  not  that  the  traveller 
invented  his  facts,  but  that  Lamb  invented  the  traveller. 
Or  yet  once  more,  how  exquisitely  unforeseen,  and  how 
rich  in  tenderness,  is  the  following  remark  as  to  the 
domestic  happiness  of  himself  and  his  "  cousin  Bridget " 
in  2Lickery  End: — "We  are  generally  in  harmony,  with 
occasional  bickerings — as  it  should  be  among  near  rela- 
tions." What  is  the  name  for  this  antithesis  of  irony — 
this  hiding  of  a  sweet  aftertaste  in  a  bitter  word  ?  What- 
ever its  name,  it  is  a  dominant  flavom-  in  Lamb's  humour. 
There  are  two  featirres,  I  think,  of  Lamb's  method  which 
tlistinguish  him  from  so  many  humorists  of  to-day.  He 
takes  homely  and  familiar  things,  and  makes  them  fresh 
and  beautiful.  The  fashion  of  to-day  is  to  vidgarise  great 
and  noble  things  by  burlesque  associations.  The  humor- 
ist's contrast  is  obtained  in  both  cases  ;  only  that  in  the 
one  it  elevates  the  commonplace,  and  in  the  other  it 
degrades  the  excellent.  And,  secondly,  in  this  generation, 
when  what  is  meant  to  raise  a  laugh  has,  nine  times  out 
of  ten,  its  root  in  cynicism,  it  shoidd  be  refreshing  to  turn 
again  and  dwell  in  the  humane  atmosphere  of  these  essays 
of  Elia. 

To  many  other  qualities  that  go  to  make  up  that  highly 
composite  thing.  Lamb's  humour — to  that  featiu"e  of  it 
that  consists  in  the  unabashed  display  of  his  own  uncon- 


XIV  INTRODUCTION. 

ventionality — his  difference  from  other  people,  and  to 
that  "metaphysical"  quality  of  his  wit  which  belongs  to 
him  in  a  far  truer  sense  than  as  ap^jlied  to  Cowley  and 
his  school,  it  is  sufficient  to  make  a  passing  reference. 
But  the  mention  of  (Jowley,  by  whom  with  Fuller,  Donne, 
and  the  rest,  his  imagination  was  assuredly  shaped,  re- 
minds us  once  more;  of  the  charm  that  belongs  to  the 
"  old  and  antique "  strain  heard  through  all  his  more 
earnest  utterances.  As  we  listen  to  EKa  the  moralist, 
now  with  the  terse  yet  stately  egotism  of  one  old 
master,  now  in  the  long-drawn-out  harmonies  of  another, 
we  live  again  with  the  thinkers  and  dreamers  of  two 
centm'ies  ago.  Sometimes  he  confides  to  us  weaknesses 
that  few  men  are  bold  enough  to  avow,  as  when  he  tells 
how  he  dreaded  death  and  clung  to  life.  "  I  am  not  con- 
tent to  pass  away  '  like  a  weaver's  shuttle.'  These  meta- 
phors solace  me  not,  nor  sweeten  the  unpalatable  draught 
of  mortality.  I  care  not  to  be  carried  with  the  tide,  and 
reluct  at  the  inevitable  com'se  of  destiny.  I  am  in  love 
with  this  green  earth  ;  the  face  of  town  and  country ; 
the  unspeakable  rural  solitudes,  and  the  sweet  security  of 
streets."  There  is  an  essay  by  Lamb's  friend  Hazlitt  on 
the  Fear  of  Death,  which  it  is  interesting  to  compare 
with  this.  The  one  essay  may  have  been  possibly  sug- 
gested by  the  other.  Hazlitt  is  that  one  of  Lamb's  con- 
temporaries with  whom  it  is  natural  to  compare  him. 
There  are,  indeed,  obvious  points  of  resemblance  between 
them.  Hazlitt  wrote  a  vigorous  and  flexible  style  ;  he 
could  quote  Shakspeare  and  Milton  as  copiously  as  Lamb; 
he  wrote  on  Lamb's  class  of  subjects  ;  he  shared  his  love 
of  i^aradoxes  and  his  frank  egotistical  method.  But 
here  all  likeness  ends.  Hazlitt's  essay  is  on  the  text  that, 
since  it  does  not  pain  us  to  reflect  that  there  was  once  a 
time  when  we  did  not  exist,  so  it  should  be  no  pain  to 
think  that  at  some  future  time  the  same  state  of  things 
shall  be.  But  this  light-hearted  attempt  at  consolation 
is  found  to  be  more  depressing  than  the  melancholy  of 
Lamb,  for  it  lacks  the  two  things  needful,  the  accent 


INTRODUCTION.  XV 

of  absolute  sincerity,  and  a  nature  unsoured  by  the 
world. 

But  Lamb  had  liis  sercuer  moods,  and  in  one  of  these 
let  us  part  from  him.  The  essay  on  the  Old  Benchers  of 
the  Inner  Temjde  is  one  of  the  most  varied  and  beautifid 
pieces  of  prose  that  English  literature  can  boast.  Enu- 
uently,  moreover,  does  it  show  us  Lamb  as  the  product 
of  two  difterent  ages — the  child  of  the  Eenascence  of  the 
sixteenth  century  and  of  that  of  the  nineteenth.  It  is 
as  if  both  Spenser  and  Wordsworth  had  laid  hands  of 
blessing  upon  his  head.  This  is  how  he  writes  of  his 
chUdhood,  when  the  old  lawyers  paced  to  and  fro  before 
him  on  the  Terrace  Walk,  making  up  to  his  childish  eyes 
"  the  mythology  of  the  Temple  :  " — 

"  In  those  days  I  saw  Gods,  as  '  old  men  covered  with 
a  mantle,'  walking  upon  the  earth.  Let  the  dreams  of 
classic  idolatry  perish — extinct  be  the  fairies  and  feirj^ 
trumpery  of  legendary  fabling — in  the  heart  of  childhood 
there  will  for  ever  spring  up  a  well  of  innocent  or  whole- 
some superstition — the  seeds  of  exaggeration  will  be  busy 
there,  and  vital,  from  everyday  forms  educing  the  un- 
known and  the  uncommon.  In  that  little  Goshen  there 
will  be  light  when  the  grown  world  floimders  about  in 
the  darkness  of  sense  and  materiality.  AVhile  childhood, 
and  while  dreams  reducing  chUdhood,  shall  be  left,  ima- 
gination shall  not  have  spread  her  holy  wings  totally  to 
fly  the  earth." 

It  is  in  such  passages  as  these  that  Lamb  shows  him- 
self, what  indeed  he  is,  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans.  He 
had  "  learned  their  great  language,"  and  yet  he  had  early 
discovered,  with  the  keen  eye  of  a  humorist,  how  effect- 
ive for  his  purpose  was  the  touch  of  the  pedantic  and 
the  fantastical  from  which  the  noblest  of  them  were  not 
wholly  free.  He  was  thus  able  to  make  even  their  weak- 
nesses a  fresh  soiu'ce  of  delight,  as  he  dealt  with  them 
from  the  vantage  ground  of  two  centuries.  It  may  seem 
strange,  on  first  thoughts,  that  the  fashion  of  Lamb's 
style  shoidd  not  have  grown,  in  its  turn,  old-fashioned  ; 


XVI  INTRODUCTION. 

that,  on  the  contrary,  no  literary  reputation  of  sixty 
years'  standing  should  seem  more  certain  of  its  continu- 
ance. But  it  is  not  the  antique  manner — the  "  self- 
pleasing  quaintness  "—-that  has  embalmed  the  substance. 
Rather  is  there  that  in  the  substance  which  ensures 
immortality  for  the  style.  It  is  one  of  the  rewards  of 
purity  of  heart  that,  allied  with  humour,  it  has  the 
promise  of  perennial  charm.  "  Saint  Charles  !"  exclaimed 
Thackeray  one  day,  as  he  ii)iishcd  reading  once  more  the 
original  of  one  of  Lamb's  letters  to  Bernard  Barton. 
There  was  much  in  Lamb's  habits  and  manners  that  we 
do  not  associate  with  the  saintly  ideal  ;  but  patience 
under  suffering  and  a  boimdless  symi)athy  hold  a  large 
place  in  that  ideal,  and  in  Charles  Lamb  these  were  not 
found  wanting. 

I  would  add  a  few  words  on  the  kind  of  information  I 
have  sought  to  furnish  in  my  Notes.  The  impertinence 
of  criticism  or  comment,  I  hope  has  been  almost  entirely 
avoided.  But  there  was  a  certain  waywardness  and  love 
of  practical  joking  in  Charles  Lamb  that  led  him  often 
to  treat  matters  of  fact  with  deliberate  falsification.  His 
essays  are  full  of  autobiography,  but  (jften  jjurposely  dis- 
guised, whether  to  amuse  those  who  were  in  the  secret, 
or  to  perplex  those  who  were  not,  it  is  inqjossible  to  say. 
In  his  own  day,  therefore,  corrections  of  fact  would  have 
been  either  superfluous,  or  would  have  spoiled  the  jest ; 
but  now  that  Lamb's  contemporaries  are  all  but  passed 
away,  much  of  the  humoiu-  of  his  method  is  lost  without 
some  clue  to  the  many  disguises  and  perversions  of  foct 
with  which  the  essays  abound.  They  are  full,  for  in- 
stance, of  references  to  actual  persons,  by  means  of  initials 
or  other  devices.  To  readers  fairly  conversant  with  the 
literary  history  of  Lamb's  time,  many  of  these  disguises 
are  transparent  enough  ;  but  for  others,  notes  here  and 
there  are  indispensable.  "We  have  an  authentic  clue  to 
most  of  the  initials  or  asterisks  employed  in  the  first  series 
of  Elia.     There  is  in  existence  a  list  of  these  initials 


INTRODUCTION.  XVll 

drawn  up  by  some  unknown  hand,  and  filled  in  with  the 
real  names  by  Lamb  himself.  Through  the  kindness  of 
its  possessor,  Mr.  Alexander  Ireland  of  Manchester,  the 
original  of  this  interesting  relic  has  been  in  my  hands, 
and  I  can  vouch  for  the  handwriting,  phraseology,  and  (it 
may  be  added)  the  spelling,  being  indubitably  Lamb's. 

There  is  much  information  in  these  essays,  more  or 
less  disguised,  al)out  Lamb's  relatives,  and  I  have  tried 
to  illustrate  these  points  by  details  of  his  family  histoiy 
for  which  I  had  not  space  in  my  Memoir  of  Lamb.  In 
a  few  instances  I  have  permitted  myself  to  repeat  some 
sentences  from  that  memoir,  where  the  same  set  of  cir- 
cumstances had  to  be  narrated  again.  But  apart  from 
changes  of  names  and  incidents  in  the  essays,  there  is  in 
Lamb's  humour  the  constant  element  of  a  mischievous 
love  of  hoaxing.  He  loves  nothing  so  much  as  to  mingle 
romance  with  reality,  so  that  it  shall  be  difficidt  for  the 
reader  to  disentangle  them.  Sometimes  he  deals  with 
fiction  as  if  it  were  fact ;  and  sometimes,  after  supplying 
literal  facts,  he  ends  with  the  insinuation  that  they  are 
fictitious.  And  besides  these  deliberate  mystifications, 
there  is  found  also  in  Lamb  a  certain  natural  incapacity 
for  being  accurate — an  inveterate  turn  for  the  opposite. 
"  What  does  Elia  care  for  dates  V  he  asks  in  one  of  his 
letters,  and  indeed  about  accm'acy  in  any  such  trifles  he 
did  not  greatly  care.  In  the  matter  of  quotation,  as 
already  remarked,  this  is  curiously  shown.  He  seldom 
quotes  even  a  hackneyed  passage  from  Shakspeare  or 
Milton  correctly  ;  and  sometimes  he  half- remembers  a 
passage  from  some  old  author,  and  re- writes  it,  to  suit  the 
2)articular  subject  he  wishes  it  to  illustrate.  I  have  suc- 
ceeded in  tracing  all  but  two  or  three  of  the  many  quota- 
tions occm-ring  in  the  essays,  and  they  serve  to  show  the 
remarkable  range  and  variety  of  his  reading. 

It  is  generally  known  that  when  Lamb  collected  his 
essays,  for  jiublication  in  book  form,  from  the  pages  of 
the  London  and  other  magazines,  he  omitted  certain 
passages.     These  I  have  thought  it  right,  y,s  a  rule,  not 


XVlll  INTRODUCTION. 

t(j  restore.  In  most  cases  the  reason  for  their  omission 
is  obvious.  They  were  excrescences  or  digressions,  injur- 
ing the  effect  of  the  essay  as  a  whole.  In  the  few  in- 
stances in  which  I  have  retained  a  note,  or  other  short 
passage,  from  the  original  versions  of  the  essays,  I  have 
shown  that  this  is  the  case  by  enclosing  it  in  brackets. 

I  have  to  thank  many  friends,  and  many  known  to  me 
only  by  tlieir  high  literary  reinitation,  fir  courteous  and 
ready  help  in  investigating  points  connected  with  Lamb's 
writings.  Among  these  I  would  mention  Mr.  Alexander 
Ireland  of  Manchester  ;  Mr.  Richard  Garnett  of  the 
British  Museum  ;  and,  as  before,  my  friend  Mr.  J.  E. 
Davis,  counsel  to  the  Commissioners  of  Police,  who  has 
given  many  valuable  suggestions  and  constant  assistance 
of  other  kinds.  I  must  also  express  my  acknowledg- 
ments to  Mr.  W.  J.  Jeaffreson,  of  Folkestone,  and  to  the 
family  of  the  late  Mr.  Arthur  Loveday  of  AVardington, 
Banbury,  for  permission  to  make  extracts  from  un])ub- 
lished  letters  of  Lamb's  in  their  possession. 

1883. 


NOTE  TO  NEW  EDITION. 

Several  corrections  and  additions  have  been  made  in 
the  Notes  to  the  present  Edition. 

Jan.  1887. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  LAST  ESSAYS. 

BY  A  FRIEND  OF  THE  LATE  ELIA. 

This  poor  geutleman,  who  for  some  months  past  had  been 
in  a  declining  way,  hath  at  length  paid  his  final  tribute 
to  nature. 

To  say  truth,  it  is  time  he  were  gone.  The  humour 
of  the  thing,  if  ever  there  was  much  in  it,  was  pretty  well 
exhausted  ;  and  a  two  years'  and  a  half  existence  has  been 
a  tolerable  duration  for  a  phantom. 

I  am  now  at  liberty  to  confess,  that  much  which  I 
have  heard  objected  to  my  late  friend's  writings  was  well 
foimded.  Crude  they  are,  I  grant  you — a  sort  of  unlicked, 
incondite  things — villainously  pranked  in  an  affected 
array  of  antique  modes  and  plxrases.  They  had  not  been 
his,  if  they  had  been  other  than  such ;  and  better  it  is, 
that  a  writer  should  be  natural  in  a  self-pleasing  quaint- 
ness,  than  to  affect  a  naturalness  (so  called)  that  shoidd 
be  strange  to  him.  Egotistical  they  have  been  pronounced 
by  some  who  did  not  know,  that  what  he  tells  us,  as  of 
himself,  was  often  true  only  (historically)  of  another ;  as 
in  a  former  Essay  (to  save  many  instances) — where  under 
the  first  person  (his  favourite  figure)  he  shadows  forth 
the  forlorn  estate  of  a  country-boy  placed  at  a  London 
school,  far  from  his  friends  and  connections — in  direct 
opposition  to  his  own  early  history.  If  it  be  egotism  to 
imply  and  twine  with  his  own  identity  the  griefs  and  afifec- 
tions  of  another — making  himself  many,  or  reducing  many 
unto  himself — then  is  the  skilful  novelist,  who  all  along 


XX  PREFACE. 

brings  in  his  hero  or  heroine,  speaking  of  themselves,  the 
greatest  egotist  of  all ;  who  yet  has  never,  therefore,  been 
accused  of  that  narrowness.  And  how  shall  the  intenser 
dramatist  escape  being  faulty,  who,  doubtless  imder  cover 
of  passion  uttered  by  another,  oftentimes  gives  blameless 
vent  to  his  most  inward  feelings,  and  expresses  his  own 
story  modestly  1 

My  late  friend  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  cha- 
racter. Those  who  did  not  like  him,  hated  him ;  and 
some,  who  once  liked  him,  afterwards  became  his  bitterest 
haters.  The  truth  is,  he  gave  himself  too  little  concern 
what  he  uttered,  and  in  whose  presence.  He  observed 
neither  time  nor  place,  and  would  e'en  out  with  what 
came  uppermost.  With  the  severe  religionist  he  would 
pass  for  a  free-thinker ;  while  the  other  faction  set  liim 
down  for  a  bigot,  or  persuaded  themselves  that  he  belied 
his  sentiments.  Few  understood  him ;  and  I  am  not 
certain  that  at  all  times  he  quite  understood  himself. 
He  too  much  affected  that  dangerous  figiu'e— irony.  Ho 
sowed  doubtful  speeches,  and  reaped  plain,  imequivocal 
hatred.  He  would  interrupt  the  gravest  discussion  with 
some  light  jest;  and  yet,  perhaps,  not  quite  irrelevant 
in  ears  that  could  understand  it.  Your  long  and  much 
talkers  hated  him.  The  informal  habit  of  his  mind,  joined 
to  an  inveterate  impediment  of  speech,  forbade  him  to  be 
an  orator ;  and  he  seemed  determined  that  no  one  else 
should  play  that  part  when  he  was  present.  He  was 
petit  and  ordinary  in  his  person  and  appearance.  I  have 
seen  him  sometimes  in  what  is  called  good  company,  but 
where  he  has  been  a  stranger,  sit  silent,  and  be  suspected 
for  an  odd  fellow ;  till  some  unlucky  occasion  provoking 
it,  he  would  stutter  out  some  senseless  pun  (not  altogether 
senseless,  pei'liaps,  if  rightly  taken),  which  has  stamped 
his  character  for  the  evening.  It  was  hit  or  miss  with 
him ;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten  he  contrived  by  this  de- 
vice to  send  away  a  whole  company  his  enemies.  His 
conceptions  rose  kindlier  than  his  utterance,  and  his  hap- 
piest impromptus  had  the  appearance  of  effort.     He  has 


PREFACE.  XXI 

been  accused  of  trj^ing  to  be  witty,  when  in  tnith  he  was 
but  straggling  to  give  his  poor  thoughts  articulation. 
He  chose  his  companions  for  some  indi\dduality  of  cha- 
racter which  they  manifested.  Hence,  not  many  persons 
of  science,  and  few  professed  literati,  were  of  his  coun- 
cils. They  were,  for  the  most  part,  persons  of  an  un- 
certain fortime  ;  and,  as  to  such  people  commonly  nothing 
is  more  obnoxious  than  a  gentleman  of  settled  (though 
moderate)  income,  he  passed  with  most  of  them  for  a 
great  miser.  To  my  knowledge  this  was  a  mistake.  His 
intimados,  to  confess  a  trath,  were  in  the  world's  eye  a 
ragged  regiment.  He  foimd  them  floating  on  the  surface 
of  society ;  and  the  colour,  or  something  else,  La  the  weed 
pleased  him.  The  bm-rs  stuck  to  him — but  they  were 
good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He  never  greatly 
cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called  good  people.  If 
any  of  these  were  scandalised  (and  offences  were  sure  to 
arise)  he  coidd  not  help  it.  When  he  has  been  remon- 
strated with  for  not  making  more  concessions  to  the  feel- 
ings of  good  people,  he  would  retort  by  asking,  what  one 
point  did  these  good  people  ever  concede  to  him  1  He 
was  temperate  in  his  meals  and  diversions,  but  always 
kept  a  little  on  this  side  of  abstemiousness.  Only  in  the 
use  of  the  Indian  weed  he  might  be  thought  a  little  ex- 
cessive. He  took  it,  he  would  say,  as  a  solvent  of  speech. 
Marry — as  the  friendly  vapoiu-  ascended,  how  his  prattle 
would  curl  up  sometimes  with  it !  the  ligaments  which 
tongue-tied  him  were  loosened,  and  the  stammerer  pro- 
ceeded a  statist ! 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  bemoan  or  rejoice 
that  my  old  friend  is  departed.  His  jests  were  beginning 
to  grow  obsolete,  and  his  stories  to  be  found  out.  He 
felt  the  approaches  of  age ;  and  while  he  pretended  to 
cUng  to  life,  you  saw  how  slender  were  the  ties  left  to  bind 
him  Discoursing  with  him  latterly  on  this  subject,  he  ex- 
pressed himself  with  a  pettishness,  which  I  thought  un- 
worthy of  him.  In  oiu-  walks  about  his  suburban  retreat 
(as  he  called  it)  at  Shacklewell,  some  children  belonging 


XXll  PREFACE. 

to  a  school  of  industry  had  met  us,  and  bowed  and  curt- 
seyed, as  he  thought,  in  an  especial  manner  to  him. 
"  They  take  me  for  a  visiting  governor,"  he  muttered 
earnestly.  He  had  a  horror,  which  he  carried  to  a  foible, 
of  looking  like  anything  important  and  parochial.  He 
thought  that  he  approached  nearer  to  that  stamp  daily. 
He  had  a  general  aversion  from  being  treated  like  a  grave 
or  respectable  character,  and  kept  a  wary  eye  upon  the 
advances  of  age  that  should  so  entitle  him.  He  herded 
always,  while  it  was  possible,  witli  people  younger  than 
himself.  He  did  not  conform  to  the  march  of  time,  but 
was  dragged  along  in  the  procession.  His  manners  lagged 
behind  his  years.  He  was  too  much  of  the  boy-man. 
The  toga  virilis  never  sate  gracefully  on  his  shoidders. 
The  impressions  of  infancy  had  burnt  into  him,  and  he 
resented  the  impertinence  of  manhood.  These  were  weak- 
nesses ;  but  such  as  they  were,  they  are  a  key  to  expli- 
cate some  of  his  writings. 


CONTENTS. 

FIRST  SERIES. 

The  South-Sea  House     . 

Oxford  in  the  Vacatiox 

Christ's  Hospital  Five  and  Thirty  Years  Ago 

The  Two  Races  of  Men  . 

New  Year's  Eve  .... 

Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist 

A  Chapter  on  Ears 

All  Fools'  Day    .... 

A  Quakers'  Meeting 

The  Old  and  the  New  Schoolmaster  . 

Imperfect  Sympathies    . 

Witches  and  other  Night  Fears 

Valentine's  Day 

My  Relations      .... 

Mackery  End  in  Hertfordshire 

My  First  Play     .  .  .  ■ 

Modern  Gallantry 

The  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple 
•[/  Grace  Before  Meat 


PAGE 
1 

10 

17 

31 

37 

44 

52 

58 

62 

67 

76 

85 

93 

96 

103 

108 

113 

118 

130 


XXIV 


CONTENTS. 


Dream-Children  ;  A  Reverie    . 

Distant  Correspondents 

The  Praise  of  Ciiimney-Sweepers 

A  Complaint   of   the   Decay   of   Beggars    in    the 

Metropolis  .  ,  .  . 

A  Dissertation  upon  Roast  Pig 
A    Bachelor's    Complaint    of    the    Behaviour    of 

Married  People       .... 
On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors 
On  the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Century 
On  the  Acting  of  Munden 


PAGE 

137 

142 
148 

156 
164 

172 
180 
192 
201 


LAST  ESS  A  YS. 

Blakesmoor  in  H shire 

Poor  Relations    . 

Detached  Thoughts  on  Books  and  Reading 

Stage  Illusion    .... 

To  the  Shade  of  Elliston 

Ellistoniana 

The  Old  Margate  Hoy 

The  Convalescent 

Sanity  of  True  Genius 

Captain  Jackson 

The  Superannuated  Man 

The  Genteel  Style  in  Writing 

Barbara  S . 


.  205 

.  210 

.  218 

.  225 

.  229 

.  231 

.  237 

.  246 

.  251 

.  254 

.  259 

.  267 

.  272 


CONTENTS.  XXV 

PAGE 

The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey  ....  278 

Amicus  Redivivus  .  .  .281 

Some  Sonnets  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney     .  286 

Newspapeks  Thirty-Five  Years  Ago    .  .  .  295 

Barrenness  of  the   Imaginative    Faculty  in  the 

Productions  of  Modern  Art  .  .  .  303 

The  Wedding       ......  315 

Rejoicings  upon  the  New  Year's  Coming  of  Age       .  321 

Old  China  ......  327.;^' 

The  Child  Angel  ;  A  Dream  .  333 

Confessions  of  a  Drunkard       •  .  336 

Popular  Fallacies  : 

I.  That  a  Bully  is  always  a  Coward  .  346 

II.  That  Ill-Gotten  Gain  never  prospers     .  347 

III.  That  a  Man  must  not  laugh  at  his  own 

Jest  .  .  .  .  .347 

IV.  That  Such  a  one  shows  his  Breeding. — 

That  it  is  easy  to  perceive  he  is  no 
Gentleman             ....  348 
V.  That  the  Poor  copy  the  Vices  of  the  Rich  349 
VI.  That  Enough  is  as  good  as  a  Feast            .  350 
VII.  Of  Two  Disputants,  the  warmest  is  gen- 
erally IN  the  wrong        .            .            .  351 
VIII.  That  Verbal  Allusions  are  not  Wit,  be- 
cause they  will  not  bear  a  Translation  352 
IX.  That  the  Worst  Puns  are  the  Best          .  353 
X.  That  Handsome  is  that  Handsome  does    .  355 


XXVI  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Popular  Fallacies  : 

XL  That  we  must  not  look  a  Gift  Horse  in 

THE  Mouth  .....     358 
XII.  That  Home  is  Home  though  it  is  never  so 

Homely       .  .  .  .360 

XIII.  That  you  must  love  Me  and  love  my  Dog     365 

XIV.  That  we  should  rise  with  the  Lark  369 
XV.  That  we  should  lie  down  with  the  Lamb    371 

XVI.  That  a  Sulky  Temper  is  a  Misfortune     .     373 

Notes 377 


THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


THE  SOUTH -SEA  HOUSE. 

Keadee,  in  thy  passage  from  the  Bank — wliere  thou  hast 
been  receiving  thy  half-yearly  dividends  (supposing  thou 
art  a  lean  annuitant  like  myself) — to  the  Flower  Pot,  to 
secure  a  jilace  for  Dalston,  or  Shacklewcll,  or  some  other 
thy  subm'ban  retreat  northerly — didst  thou  never  observe 
a  melancholy-looking,  handsome,  brick  and  stone  edifice, 
to  the  left,  where  Threadneedle  Street  abuts  upon  Bishops- 
gate  1  I  dare  say  thou  hast  often  admired  its  magnificent 
portals  ever  gaping  wide,  and  disclosing  to  view  a  grave 
covu't,  with  cloisters  and  pillars,  with  few  or  no  traces  of 
goers-in  or  comers-out — a  desolation  something  like  Bal- 
clutha's.i 

This  was  once  a  house  of  trade — a  centre  of  busy 
interests.  The  throng  of  merchants  was  here — the  quick 
pidse  of  gain — and  here  some  forms  of  business  are  still 
kept  up,  though  the  soul  be  long  since  fled.  Here  are 
still  to  be  seen  stately  porticoes ;  imposing  staircases, 
offices  roomy  as  the  state  apartments  in  palaces — de- 
serted, or  thinly  peopled  with  a  few  straggling  clerks; 
the  still  more  sacred  interiors  of  com't  and  committee 
rooms,  with  venerable  faces  of  beadles,  door-keepers — 
directors  seated  in  form  on  solemn  days  (to  proclaim  a 
dead  dividend)  at  long  worm-eaten  tables,  that  have  been 
mahogany,  with  tarnished  gilt-leather  coverings,  sujiport- 

*  I  passed  by  the  walls  of  Balclntlia,  and  tliey  were  desolate. — 

OSSIAN. 


2  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

iiig  massy  silver  inkstands  lung  since  dry ; — the  oaken 
wainscots  hung  with  i)ictures  of  deceased  governors  and 
sub-governors,  of  Queen  Anne,  and  the  two  first  monarchs 
of  the  Brunswick  dynasty ;— huge  charts,  which  subse- 
quent discoveries  have  antiquated ; — dusty  maps  of 
Mexico,  dim  as  dreams,  and  soundings  of  the  Bay  of 
Panama !  The  long  passages  hiuig  with  buckets,  appended, 
in  idle  row,  to  walls,  whose  substance  might  defy  any, 
short  of  the  last,  conflagration :  with  vast  ranged  of 
cellarage  under  all,  where  dollars  and  pieces  of  eight  once 
lay,  an  "imsunned  heap,"  for  Mammon  to  have  solaced 
his  solitary  heart  withal — long  since  dissipated,  or  scat- 
tered into  air  at  the  blast  of  the  breaking  of  that  fxmous 
Bubble. • 

Such  is  the  South-Sea  House.  At  least  such  it  was 
forty  years  ago,  when  I  knew  it — a  magnificent  relic  ! 
What  alterations  may  have  been  made  in  it  smce,  I  have 
had  no  opportimities  of  verifying.  Time,  I  take  for 
granted,  has  not  freshened  it.  No  wind  has  resuscitated 
the  face  of  the  sleeping  waters.  A  thicker  crust  by  this 
time  stagnates  upon  it.  The  moths,  that  were  then 
battening  upon  its  ol:)solete  ledgers  and  day-books,  have 
rested  from  their  depredations,  l:)ut  other  light  generations 
have  succeeded,  making  fine  fretwork  among  their  single 
and  double  entries.  Layers  of  dust  have  accumulated 
(a  superfcetation  of  dirt !)  upon  the  old  layers,  that  seldoni 
used  to  lie  disturbed,  save  by  some  cm-ious  finger,  now 
and  then,  inquisitive  to  explore  the  mode  of  book-keeping 
in  Queen  Anne's  reigii ;  or,  with  less  hallowed  cmiosity, 
seeking  to  unveil  some  of  the  mysteries  of  that  tremen- 
dous HOAX,  whose  extent  the  petty  peculators  of  oiu-  day 
look  back  upon  with  the  same  expression  of  incredulous 
admiration  and  hopeless  ambition  of  rivaliy  as  would 
become  the  pimy  face  of  modern  conspiracy  contemiilating 
the  Titan  size  of  Vaux's  superhuman  plot. 

Peace  to  the  manes  of  the  Bubble  !  Sihnice  and 
destitution  are  uijon  thy  walls,  proud  house,  for  a 
memorial ! 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  3 

Situated,  as  thou  art,  in  the  very  heart  of  stu-riug  and 
living  commerce — amid  the  fret  and  fever  of  spccuhition 
— with  the  Bank,  and  the  'Change,  and  the  India  Hoiise 
about  thee,  in  the  heyday  of  present  prosperity,  with  theu- 
important  faces,  as  it  were,  insulting  thee,  their  jyoor 
neighhour  out  of  huMiiess — to  the  idle  and  merely  con- 
templative— to  such  as  me,  old  house  !  there  is  a  charm 
in  thy  quiet : — a  cessation — a  coolness  from  business — an 
indolence  almost  cloistral — which  is  delightful !  AVith 
what  reverence  have  I  paced  thy  great  bare  rooms  and 
coiu-ts  at  eventide  !  They  spoke  of  the  past : — the  shade 
of  some  dead  accountant,  with  %isionary  pen  in  ear,  would 
flit  by  me,  stiff  as  in  Hfe.  Living  accounts  and  accoimt- 
auts  puzzle  me.  I  have  no  skill  in  figmiug.  But  thy 
great  dead  tomes,  which  scarce  three  degenerate  clerks  of 
the  present  day  could  lift  from  their  enshrining  shelves — 
with  their  old  fontastic  flom-ishes  and  decorative  rubric 
interlacings — theu-  sums  in  triple  columniations,  set  dowQ 
■ttith  formal  superfluity  of  ciphers — with  pious  sentences 
at  the  beguming,  without  which  om-  religious  ancestors 
never  ventiu-ed  to  open  a  book  of  bi;suiess,  or  bill  of 
lading — the  costly  vellimi  covers  of  some  of  them  almost 
persuading  us  that  we  are  got  into  some  better  library — 
are  very  agreeable  and  edifjing  spectacles.  I  can  look 
upon  these  defunct  dragons  -ft-ith  complacency.  Thy 
heavy  odd-shaped  ivory-handled  penknives  (our  ancestors 
had  everything  on  a  larger  scale  than  we  have  hearts  for) 
are  as  good  as  anything  from  Herculaneimi.  The  poimce- 
boxes  of  om-  days  have  gone  retrogi-ade. 

The  very  clerks  which  I  remember  in  the  South-Sea 
House — I  speak  of  forty  years  back — had  an  ah-  very 
different  from  those  in  the  public  offices  that  I  have  had 
to  do  with  since.  They  partook  of  the  genius  of  the 
place  ! 

They  were  mostly  (for  the  establishment  did  not  admit 
of  superfluous  salaries)  bachelors.  Generally  (for  they 
had  not  much  to  do)  persons  of  a  curious  and  speculative 
turn  of  mind.     Old-fashioned,  for  a  reason   mentioned 


4  THE  ESSAYS  f)F  ELI  A. 

before ;  Iminoiirists,  for  tliey  were  of  all  descriptions ; 
and,  not  having  been  brought  together  in  early  life  (which 
has  a  tendency  to  assimilate  the  members  of  corporate 
bodies  to  each  other),  but,  for  the  most  part,  placed  hi 
this  house  in  ripe  or  middle  age,  they  necessarily  carried 
into  it  their  separate  habits  and  oddities,  unqualified,  if 
I  may  so  speak,  as  into  a  common  stock.  Hence  they 
formed  a  sort  of  Noah's  ark.  Odd  fishes.  A  lay-mon- 
astery. Domestic  retainers  in  a  great  house,  kept  more 
for  show  than  use.  Yet  jileasaut  fellows,  fidl  of  chat — 
and  not  a  few  among  them  had  arrived  at  considerable 
proficiency  on  the  German  flute. 

The  cashier  at  that  time  was  one  Evans,  a  Cambro- 
Briton.  He  had  something  of  the  choleric  complexion  of 
his  countrymen  stamped  on  his  visage,  but  was  a  worthy, 
sensible  man  at  bottom.  He  wore  his  hair,  to  the  last, 
powdered  and  frizzed  out,  in  the  fashion  which  I  remem- 
ber to  have  seen  in  caricatures  of  what  were  termed,  in 
my  young  days,  Maccaronies.  He  was  the  last  of  that 
race  of  beaitx.  Melancholy  as  a  gib-cat  over  his  comiter 
all  the  forenoon,  I  think  I  see  him  making  ujd  his  cash 
(as  they  call  it)  with  tremidous  fingers,  as  if  he  feared 
every  one  about  him  was  a  defaulter  ;  in  his  hj'jiochondry, 
ready  to  imagine  himself  one  ;  haunted,  at  least,  with  the 
idea  of  the  possibility  of  his  becoming  one :  his  tristful 
visage  clearing  up  a  little  over  his  roast  neck  of  veal  at 
Anderton's  at  two  (where  his  picture  still  hangs,  taken 
a  little  before  his  death  by  desire  of  the  master  of  the 
coffee-house  which  he  had  frequented  for  the  last  five-and- 
twenty  years),  but  not  attaining  the  meridian  of  its 
animation  till  evening  brought  on  the  hour  of  tea  and 
visiting.  The  simultaneous  sound  of  his  Avell-known  rap 
at  the  door  with  the  stroke  of  the  clock  announcing  six, 
was  a  topic  of  never-failing  mirth  in  the  families  which 
this  dear  old  bachelor  gladdened  with  his  presence.  Then 
Avas  his  fortc^  his  glorified  horn-  !  How  would  he  chirp 
and  exjiand  over  a  nniffin  !  How  would  he  dilate  into 
secret   history !      His   countryman.   Pennant   himself,   in 


THE  SOUTU-SEA  HOUSE.  5 

particular,  could  not  be  more  eloqueut  than  lie  in  relation 
to  old  and  new  Loudon — the  site  of  old  theatres,  churches, 
streets  gone  to  decay — where  Rosamoiul's  pond  stood — 
the  Mulberry-gardens — and  the  Conduit  in  Cheap — with 
many  a  pleasant  anecdote,  derived  from  paternal  tradition, 
of  those  gTotesque  figures  which  Hogarth  has  immortalized 
in  his  i^ictiu-e  of  Norm — the  worthy  descendants  of  those 
heroic  confessors,  who,  flying  to  this  country  from  the 
wrath  of  Louis  the  Foiuteenth  and  his  dragoons,  kept 
alive  the  flame  of  pure  religion  m  tlie  sheltering  obscmities 
of  Hog  Lane  and  the  vicinity  of  the  Seven  Dials  ! 

Deputy,  rmder  Evans,  was  Thomas  Tame.  He  had 
the  air  and  stoop  of  a  nobleman.  You  woidd  have  taken 
him  for  one,  had  you  met  him  m  one  of  the  passages 
leading  to  Westminster  Hall.  By  stoop,  I  mean  that 
gentle  bending  of  the  body  forwards,  which,  in  great  men, 
must  be  supposed  to  be  the  efifect  of  an  habitual  con- 
descending attention  to  the  applications  of  their  inferiors. 
While  he  held  you  in  converse,  you  felt  strained  to  the 
height  in  the  colloquy.  The  conference  over,  you  were 
at  leisiue  to  smile  at  the  comparative  insignificance  of  the 
pretensions  which  had  just  awed  you.  His  intellect  was 
of  the  shallowest  order.  It  did  not  reach  to  a  saw  or  a 
proverb.  His  mind  was  in  its  original  state  of  ^diite 
paper.  A  sucking  babe  might  have  posed  him.  What 
was  it  then  ?  Was  he  rich  1  Alas,  no  !  Thomas  Tame 
was  very  poor.  Both  he  and  Ms  wife  looked  outwardly 
gentlefolks,  when  I  fear  all  was  not  well  at  all  times 
withm.  She  had  a  neat  meagre  person,  which  it  was 
e^•ideut  she  had  not  sinned  in  over-pampering ;  but  in  its 
veins  was  noble  blood.  She  traced  her  descent,  by  some 
labjTinth  of  relationship,  which  I  never  thoroughly  under- 
stood,— much  less  can  explain  with  any  heraldic  certainty 
at  this  time  of  day, — to  the  illustrious  but  unfortimate 
house  of  Dei-wentwater.  This  was  the  secret  of  Thomas's 
stoop.  This  was  the  thought — the  sentiment — the  bright 
solitary  star  of  yoiu-  lives, — ye  mild  and  happy  i)air,— 
which  cheered  you  in  the  night  of  intellect,  and  in  the 


6  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

obscurity  of  your  station  !  This  was  to  you  instead  of 
riches,  instead  of  rank,  instead  of  glittering  attainments  : 
and  it  was  worth  them  all  together.  You  insulted  none 
with  it ;  but,  while  you  wore  it  as  a  i)iece  of  defensive 
armour  only,  no  insult  likewise  could  reach  you  throiigh 
it.     Decns  et  solamen. 

Of  quite  another  stamp  was  the  then  accountant,  John 
Tipp.  He  neither  pretended  to  high  blood,  nor  in  good 
truth  cared  one  fig  about  the  matter.  He  "  thought  an 
accountant  the  gi-eatest  character  in  the  world,  and  him- 
self the  greatest  accountant  in  it."  Yet  John  was  not 
without  his  hobby.  The  fiddle  relieved  his  vacant  hours. 
He  sang,  certainly,  with  other  notes  than  to  the  Orj^hean 
lyre.  He  did,  indeed,  scream  and  scrape  most  abomi- 
nably. His  fine  suite  of  official  rooms  in  Threadneedle 
Street,  which,  without  anything  very  substantial  appended 
to  them,  were  enough  to  enlarge  a  man's  notions  of  him- 
self that  lived  in  them  (I  know  not  who  is  the  occujiier 
of  them  now  ^),  resounded  fortnightly  to  the  notes  of  a 
concert  of  "  sweet  breasts,"  as  our  ancestors  would  have 
called  them,  culled  from  club-rooms,  and  orchestras — 
chorus  singers — first  and  second  violoncellos — double 
basses — and  clarionets — who  ate  his  cold  mutton  and 
drank  his  punch  and  praised  his  ear.  He  sat  like  Lord 
Midas  among  them.  But  at  the  desk  Tipp  was  quite 
another  sort  of  creature.  Thence  all  ideas,  that  were 
purely  ornamental,  were  banished.  You  could  not  speak 
of  anything  romantic  without  rebuke.  Politics  were  ex- 
cluded. A  newspaper  was  thought  too  refined  and 
abstracted.  The  whole  duty  of  man  consisted  in  writing 
ott"  dividend  warrants.  The  striking  of  the  annual  balance 
in  the  comj^any's  books  (which,  perhaps,  differed  from  the 

'■  [I  have  since  been  informed,  that  the  present  tenant  of  them 
is  a  Mr.  Lamb,  a  gentleman  who  is  happy  in  the  possession  of  some 
choice  pictures,  and  among  them  a  I'are  portrait  of  Milton,  which  I 
mean  to  do  myself  the  pleasure  of  going  to  see,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  refresh  my  memory  with  the  sight  of  old  scenes.  Mr. 
Lamb  has  the  character  of  a  right  courteous  and  communicative 
collector.] 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  7 

balance  of  last  year  iu  the  sum  of  £25  : 1  :  G)  occupied 
his  days  and  nights  for  a  month  previous.  Not  that  Tipp 
was  blind  to  the  deadness  of  things  (as  they  called  them 
in  the  city)  in  his  beloved  house,  or  did  not  sigh  for  a 
retm-n  of  the  old  stirring  days  when  South -Sea  hopes 
were  young  (he  was  indeed  equal  to  the  wielding  of  any 
the  most  intricate  accounts  of  the  most  flomishing  com- 
pany in  these  or  those  days) :  but  to  a  genuine  accountant 
the  difterence  of  jiroceeds  is  as  nothing.  The  fractional 
farthing  is  as  dear  to  his  heart  as  the  thousands  which 
stand  before  it.  He  is  the  true  actor,  who,  whether  his 
part  be  a  prince  or  a  peasant,  must  act  it  with  like 
intensity.  With  Tipp  form  was  everything.  His  life 
was  formal.  His  actions  seemed  ruled  with  a  ruler. 
His  pen  was  not  less  erring  than  his  heart.  He  made 
the  best  executor  iu  the  world  :  he  was  plagued  with 
incessant  executorships  accordingly,  which  excited  his 
spleen  and  soothed  his  vanity  in  equal  ratios.  He  would 
swear  (for  Tipp  swore)  at  the  little  orphans,  whose  rights 
he  would  guard  with  a  tenacity  like  the  grasp  of  the 
dying  hand  that  commended  their  interests  to  his  pro- 
tection. With  all  this  there  was  about  him  a  sort  of 
timidity  (his  few  enemies  used  to  give  it  a  worse  name) 
— a  something  which,  in  reverence  to  the  dead,  we  will 
place,  if  you  please,  a  little  on  this  side  of  the  heroic. 
Nature  certainly  had  been  pleased  to  endow  John  Tijjp 
with  a  sufficient  measure  of  the  princijile  of  self-preserva- 
tion. There  is  a  cowardice  which  we  do  not  despise, 
because  it  has  nothing  base  or  treacherous  in  its  elements  ; 
it  betrays  itself,  not  you :  it  is  mere  temperament ;  the 
absence  of  the  romantic  and  the  enterjirising ;  it  sees  a 
lion  in  the  way,  and  will  not,  with  Fortinbras,  "  greatly 
find  quarrel  in  a  straw,"  when  some  supposed  honoirr  is 
at  stake.  Tipp  never  mounted  the  box  of  a  stage-coach 
in  his  life ;  or  leaned  against  the  rails  of  a  balcony ;  or 
walked  upon  the  ridge  of  a  parapet ;  or  looked  down  a 
precijjice  ;  or  let  off  a  gun  ;  or  went  upon  a  water-party ; 
or  would  willingly  let  you  go  if  he  could  have  helped  it : 


8  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

neither  wua  it  recorded  of  liiin,  tluit  for  lucre,  or  for 
intimidatiou,  he  ever  forsook  friend  or  2)rinciple. 

Wlioni  next  shall  we  summon  from  the  dusty  dead, 
in  whom  common  qualities  become  uncommon  1  Can  I 
forget  thee,  Henry  Man,  the  wit,  the  polished  man  of 
letters,  the  author,  of  the  South-Sea  House  1  who  never 
enteredst  thy  office  in  a  morning  or  quittcdst  it  in  mid- 
day (what  didst  thou  in  an  office  1)  Avithout  some  quirk 
that  left  a  sting !  Thy  gibes  and  thy  jokes  are  now 
extinct,  or  siu'vive  but  in  two  forgotten  volumes,  which  I 
had  the  good  fortune  to  rescue  from  a  stall  in  Barbican, 
not  three  days  ago,  and  found  thee  terse,  fresh,  epigram- 
matic, as  alive.  Thy  wit  is  a  little  gone  by  in  these 
fastidious  days — thy  topics  arc  staled  by  the  "  new-born 
gauds  "  of  the  time  : — but  great  thou  used  to  be  in  Public 
Ledgers,  and  in  Chronicles,  upon  Chatham,  and  Shelbm-ne, 
and  Rockingham,  and  Howe,  and  Burgoyne,  and  Clinton, 
and  the  war  which  ended  in  the  tearing  from  Great 
Britain  her  rebellious  colonics, — and  Keppcl,  and  Wilkes, 
and  Sawbridge,  and  Bull,  and  Dunning,  and  Pratt,  and 
Richmond — and  such  small  politics. — — 

A  little  less  facetious,  and  a  great  deal  more  obstre- 
perous, was  fine  rattling,  rattleheaded  Plumer.  He  was 
descended, — not  in  a  right  line,  reader  (for  his  lineal 
pretensions,  like  his  personal,  favom-ed  a  little  of  the 
sinister  bend) — from  the  Plumers  of  Hertfordshire.  So 
tradition  gave  him  out ;  and  certain  family  features  not 
a  little  sanctioned  the  opinion.  Certainly  old  Walter 
Plumer  (his  reputed  author)  had  been  a  rake  in  his  days, 
and  visited  much  in  Italy,  and  had  seen  the  world.  He 
was  uncle,  bachelor-uncle,  to  the  fine  old  whig  still  living, 
who  has  represented  the  county  in  so  many  successive 
parliaments,  and  has  a  fine  old  mansion  near  Ware. 
Walter  flourished  in  George  the  Second's  days,  and  was 
the  same  who  was  summoned  before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons about  a  business  of  franks,  with  the  old  Duchess  of 
Marlborough.  You  may  read  of  it  in  Johnson's  Life  of 
Cave.     Cave  came  off  cleverly  in  that  business.     It  is 


THE  SOliTH-SEA  HOUSE.  9 

certain  our  Plumcr  did  nothing  to  discountenance  the 
rumour.  He  rather  seemed  pleased  whenever  it  "was, 
with  all  gentleness,  insinuated.  But  besides  his  fanuly 
pretensions,  Plumer  was  an  engaging  fellow,  and  sang 
gloriously. 

Not  so  sweetly  sang  Plumer  as  thou  sangest,  mild, 

child-like,  pastoral  M ;  a  flute's  breathing  less  divinely 

whisijcring  than  thy  Arcadian  melodies,  when,  in  tones 
worthy  of  Arden,  thou  didst  chant  that  song  sung  by 
Amiens  to  the  banished  duke,  whicli  proclaims  the  winter 
wind  more  lenient  than  for  a  man  to  be  ungTateful.  Thy 
sire  was  old  sm-ly  M ,  the  unapproachable  church- 
warden of  Bishopsgate.  He  knew  not  what  he  did,  when 
he  begat  thee,  like  spring,  gentle  offspring  of  blustering 
winter : — only  imfortunate  in  thy  ending,  which  should 
have  been  mild,  conciliatory,  swan-like.- 

Much  remains  to  sing.  Many  fantastic  shapes  rise 
up,  but  they  must  be  mine  in  private : — abeady  I  have 
fooled  the  reader  to  the  top  of  his  bent;  else  could  I 
omit  that  strange  creatiu-e  Woollett,  who  existed  in  trying 
the  question,  and  hought  litigations  ! — and  still  stranger, 
inimitable,  solemn  Hepworth,  from  whose  gravity  Newton 
might  have  deduced  the  law  of  gTavitation.  How  pro- 
foiuidly  would  he  nib  a  pen — with  what  deliberation 
would  he  wet  a  wafer  ! 

But  it  is  time  to  close — night's  wheels  are  rattling 
fast  over  me — it  is  proper  to  have  done  with  this  solemn 
mockeiy. 

Reader,  what  if  I  have  been  playing  with  thee  all  this 
while — peradventiu-e  the  very  names,  which  I  have  sum- 
moned up  before  thee,  are  fantastic — insubstantial — like 
Henry  Pimpernel,  and  old  John  Naps  of  Greece  : 

Be  satisfied  that  something  answering  to  them  has  had 
a  being.     Their  importance  is  from  the  past. 


10  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


OXFORD    m   THE   VACATION. 

Casting  a  iireparatory  glance  at  the  bottom  of  this 
article — as  the  very  conuoisseiu'  in  prints,  with  ciu'sory 
eye  (which,  while  it  reads,  seems  as  tliough  it  read  not), 
never  fails  to  consult  the  quis  sctdpsit  in  the  corner, 
before  he  pronounces  some  rare  piece  to  be  a  Vivares,  or 
a  WooUet — methinks  I  hear  you  exclaim,  Reader,  Who 
is  Mia  ? 

Because  in  my  last  I  tried  to  divert  thee  with  some 
half-forgotten  humom-s  of  some  old  clerks  defunct,  in  an 
old  house  of  business,  long  since  gone  to  decay,  doubt- 
less you  have  already  set  me  down  in  yom-  mind  as  one 
of  the  self-same  college — a  votary  of  the  desk —  a  notched 
and  cropt  scrivener — one  that  sucks  his  sustenance,  as 
certain  sick  people  are  said  to  do,  through  a  quill. 

Well,  I  do  agnise  something  of  the  sort.  I  confess 
that  it  is  my  humour,  my  fancy  —  in  the  fore-part  of 
the  day,  when  the  mhid  of  your  man  of  letters  requires 
some  relaxation  (and  none  better  than  such  as  at  first 
sight  seems  most  abhorrent  from  his  beloved  studies) — 
to  while  away  some  good  hours  of  my  time  in  the  con- 
templation of  indigos,  cottons,  raw  silks,  piece-goods, 
flowered  or  otherwise.  In  the  first  place  '^  *  * 
and  then  it  sends  you  home  wdth  such  increased  appetite 
to  yoiu'  books  *  *  *  .-/c  *  * 

not  to  say,  that  yom-  outside  sheets,  and  waste  wrap2)ers 
of  foolscap,  do  receive  into  them,  most  kindly  and 
naturally,  the  impression  of  sonnets,  epigrams,  essays — so 
that  the  very  parings  of  a  counting-house  are,  in  some 
sort,  tlie  settings  up  of  an  author.  The  enfranchised  quill, 
that  has  plodded  all  the  morning  among  the  cart-rucks 
of  figures  and  ciphers,  frisks  and  curvets  so  at  its  ease 
over  the  flowery  carpet -ground  of  a  midnight  disserta- 
tion.— It  feels  its  promotion.  >'*  *  *  * 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  11 

So  that  you  see,  upon  tlic  whole,  the  hteraiy  dignity  of 
Elia  is  very  little,  if  at  all,  compromised  in  the  conde- 
scension. 

Not  that,  in  my  anxioiLS  detail  of  the  many  commo- 
dities incidental  to  the  life  of  a  pubUc  ofiice,  I  would 
be  thought  blind  to  certain  flaws,  which  a  cunning  carper 
might  be  able  to  pick  in  this  Joseph's  vest.  And  here  I 
nuist  have  leave,  in  the  fulness  of  my  soul,  to  regret  the 
abolition,  and  doing-away-with  altogether,  of  those  con- 
solatory interstices,  and  sprinklings  of  freedom,  through 
the  foiu'  seasons, — the  red-letter  days,  now  become,  to  all 
intents  and  piurposes,  dead-letter  days.  There  was  Paul, 
and  Stephen,  and  Barnabas — • 

Andrew  and  John,  men  famous  iu  old  times 

— we  were  used  to  keep  all  their  days  holy,  as  long  back 
as  when  I  was  at  school  at  Christ's.  I  remember  their 
effigies,  by  the  same  token,  in  the  old  Baskett  Prayer 
Book.  There  hung  Peter  in  his  imeasy  postiu-e — holy 
Bartlemy  iu  the  troublesome  act  of  flaying,  after  the 
famous  Marsyas  by  Spagnolctti. — I  honom-ed  them  all, 
and  could  almost  have  wept  the  defalcation  of  Iscariot — 
so  much  did  we  love  to  keep  holy  memories  sacred : — 
only  methought  I  a  little  gniidged  at  the  coalition  of  the 
better  Jude  with  Simon  —  clubbing  (as  it  were)  their 
sanctities  together,  to  make  up  one  poor  gaudy -day 
between  them  —  as  an  economy  imworthy  of  the  dis- 
pensation. 

These  were  bright  visitations  in  a  scholar's  and  a 
clerk's  life— "  far  off  their  coming  shone." — I  was  as 
good  as  an  almanac  in  those  days.  I  coidd  have  told 
you  such  a  saint's-day  falls  out  next  week,  or  the  week 
after.  Peradventure  the  Epiphany,  by  some  periodical 
infelicity,  woidd,  once  in  six  years,  merge  in  a  Sabbath. 
Now  am  I  little  better  than  one  of  the  profane.  Let 
me  not  be  thought  to  arraign  the  wisdom  of  my  civil 
superiors,  who  have  judged  'the  further  observation  of 
these  holy  tides  to  be  papistical,  superstitious.     Only  in 


12  THE  ESSAYiS  (iK  ELIA. 

a  custom  of  sucli  loiii^  standing,  incthiiiks,  if  their  Holi- 
ncsses  the  Bisliops  had,  in  decency,  been  fii-st  sounded — 
but  I  am  wading  out  of  my  dejjths.  I  am  not  the  man 
to  decide  the  limits  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authority 
— I  am  plain  Elia — no  Sclden,  nor  Archbishop  Usher 
— tliough  at  present  in  the  thick  of  their  bool^s,  here  in 
the  heart  of  learning,  under  the  shadow  of  the  miglity 
Bodley. 

I  can  here  play  the  gentleman,  enact  the  student.  To 
such  a  one  as  myself,  who  has  been  defrauded  in  his 
young  years  of  tlie  sweet  food  of  academic  institution, 
nowhere  is  so  pleasant,  to  while  away  a  few  idle  weeks 
at,  as  one  or  other  of  the  Universities.  Their  vacation, 
too,  at  this  time  of  the  year,  falls  in  so  pat  with  ours. 
Here  I  can  take  my  walks  unmolested,  and  fancy  myself 
of  what  degree  or  standing  I  please.  I  seem  admitted 
ad  eundevi.  I  fetch  up  past  opportunities.  I  can  rise 
at  the  chapel-bell,  and  dream  that  it  rings  for  vie.  In 
moods  of  humility  I  can  be  a  Sizar,  or  a  Servitor.  When 
tlie  peacock  vein  rises,  I  strut  a  Gentleman  Commoner. 
In  graver  moments,  I  proceed  Master  of  Arts.  Indeed 
I  do  not  think  I  am  much  milike  that  respectable 
character.  I  liave  seen  your  dim-eyed  vergers,  and  bed- 
makers  in  spectacles,  droji  a  bow  or  a  curtsy,  as  I  pass, 
wisely  mistaking  me  for  something  of  the  sort.  I  go 
about  in  black,  which  favours  the  notion.  Only  in 
Christ  Church  reverend  quadrangle  I  can  be  content  to 
pass  for  nothing  short  of  a  Seraphic  Doctor. 

The  walks  at  these  times  are  so  much  one's  own, — 
the  tall  trees  of  Christ's,  the  groves  of  Magdalen  !  Tlie 
halls  deserted,  and  with  open  doors,  inviting  one  to  slij) 
in  unperceived,  and  pay  a  devoir  to  some  Founder,  or 
noble  or  royal  Benefactress  (tliat  should  have  been  ours) 
whose  portrait  seems  to  smile  upon  their  over -looked 
beadsman,  and  to  adopt  me  for  their  own.  Then,  to 
take  a  peep  in  by  the  way  at  the  butteries,  and  sculleries, 
redolent  of  antique  hospitality :  the  immense  caves  of 
kitchens,  kitchen  firepkaces,  cordial  recesses  ;  ovens  wliose 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  13 

first  pies  were  baked  four  centuries  ago  ;  and  sjiits  whicli 
have  cooked  for  Chaucer  !  Not  the  meanest  minister 
among  the  dishes  but  is  hallowed  to  me  through  his 
imagination,  and  the  Cook  goes  forth  a  Manciple. 

Antiquity !  thou  wondrous  charm,  what  art  thou  ? 
that,  being  nothing,  art  everything !  When  thou  ivert, 
thou  wert  not  antiquity  —  then  thou  wcrt  nothing, 
but  hadst  a  remoter  antiquity,  as  thou  calledst  it,  to  look 
back  to  with  blind  veneration  ;  thou  thyself  bemg  to  thy- 
self flat,  jejune,  modern !  What  mystery  lurks  in  this 
retroversion  1  or  what  half  Januses  ^  are  we,  that  cannot 
look  forward  with  the  same  idolatry  with  which  we  for 
ever  revert !  The  mighty  future  is  as  nothing,  being 
everytliing  !  the  past  is  everything,  bemg  nothing  ! 

What  were  thy  dark  ages  ?  Surely  the  sun  rose  as 
brightly  then  as  now,  and  man  got  him  to  his  work  in 
the  morning  1  Why  is  it  we  can  never  hear  mention  of 
them  without  an  accompanying  feeling,  as  though  a  pal- 
pable obscm-e  had  dimmed  the  face  of  things,  and  that 
our  ancestors  wandered  to  and  fro  groping  ! 

Above  all  thy  rarities,  old  Oxenford,  what  do  most 
arride  and  solace  me,  are  thy  repositories  of  mouldering 
learning,  thy  shelves 

What  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library  !  It  seems  as 
tliough  all  the  soids  of  all  the  writers,  that  have  be- 
queathed their  labours  to  these  Bodleians,  were  reposing 
liere,  as  in  some  dormitory,  or  middle  state.  I  do  not 
want  to  handle,  to  profane  the  leaves,  their  winding-sheets. 
I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a  shade.  I  seem  to  inhale  learn- 
ing, walking  amid  their  foliage ;  and  the  odour  of  their 
old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant  as  the  first  bloom 
of  those  sciential  apijles  which  grew  amid  the  happy 
orchard. 

Still  less  have  I  cm-iosity  to  distm-b  the  elder  repose 

of  MSS.     Those  variai  lectiones,  so  tempting  to  the  more 

erudite  palates,  do  birt   distm-b  and  unsettle  my  faith. 

I  am  no  Herculanean  raker.      The  credit  of  the  three 

^  Jfniuses  of  one  face, — Sir  Thomas  Brownk. 


14  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

witnesses  might  have  slejit  imimpeached  for  mc.  I  leave 
these  curiosities  to  Porson,  aud  to  G.  D. — wliom,  by  the 
way,  I  found  busy  as  a  moth  over  some  rotten  archive, 
rummaged  out  of  some  seldom-explored  jiress,  in  a  nook  at 
Oriel.  With  long  poring,  he  is  grown  almost  into  a  book. 
He  stood  as  passive  as  one  by  the  side  of  the  old  shelves. 
I  longed  to  new-coat  him  in  russia,  and  assign  him  his 
place.       He  might  have  mustered  for  a  tall  Sca])ula. 

D.  is  assiduous  in  his  visits  to  these  seats  of  learning. 
No  inconsiderable  portion  of  his  moderate  fortmic,  I 
apprehend,  is  consumed  in  journeys  between  them  and 
Clifford's  Inn — where,  like  a  dove  on  the  asjj's  nest,  he 
has  long  taken  up  his  unconscious  abode,  amid  an  incon- 
gruous assembly  of  attoi-neys,  attorneys'  clerks,  apparitors, 
promoters,  vermin  of  the  law,  among  whom  he  sits,  "  in 
calm  and  sinless  peace."  The  fangs  of  the  law  pierce 
him  not — the  winds  of  litigation  blow  over  his  humble 
chambers — the  hard  sheriff's  officer  moves  his  hat  as  he 
passes — legal  nor  illegal  discoiirtesy  touches  him — none 
thinks  of  offering  violence  or  injustice  to  him — you  would 
as  soon  "strike  an  abstract  idea." 

D.  has  been  engaged,  he  tells  me,  through  a  coiu'se  of 
laborious  years,  in  an  investigation  into  all  curious  matter 
connected  with  the  two  Universities ;  aud  has  lately  lit 

upon  a  MS.  collection  of  charters,  relative  to  0 ,  by 

which  he  hopes  to  settle  some  disputed  points — j^articu- 
larly  that  long  controversy  between  them  as  to  priority 
of  foundation.  The  ardour  with  which  he  engages  in 
these  liberal  pursuits,  I  am  afi-aid,  has  not  met  with  all 

the  encouragement  it  deserved,  either  here  or  at  C . 

Your  caputs,  and  heads  of  colleges,  care  less  than  any- 
body else  about  these  questions. — Contented  to  suck  the 
milky  fountains  of  their  Alma  Maters,  without  inquiring 
into  the  venerable  gentlewomen's  years,  they  rather  hold 
such  ciu-iosities  to  be  impertinent — unreverend.  They 
have  their  good  glebe  lands  in  manu,  and  care  not  much 
to  rake  into  the  title-deeds.  I  gather  at  least  so  nmch 
from  other  sources,  for  I),  is  not  a  man  to  complain. 


OXFORD   IN  THE   VACATION.  15 

D.  started  like  an  unbroken  heifer,  when  I  internipted 
him.  A  'priori  it  \v;i,s  not  very  probable  that  we  should 
have  met  in  Oriel.  But  D.  would  have  done  the  same, 
had  I  accosted  him  on  the  sudden  in  his  own  walks  in 
Clifford's  Inu,  or  in  the  Temple.  -In  addition  to  a  pro- 
voking short-sightedness  (the  effect  of  late  studies  and 
watcliings  at  the  midnight  oil)  D.  is  the  most  absent  of 
men.  He  made  a  call  the  other  morning  at  our  friend 
M.'s  hi  Bedford  Square  ;  and,  finding  nobody  at  home, 
was  ushered  into  the  hall,  where,  asking  for  pen  and  ink, 
with  great  exactitude  of  pm-pose  he  enters  me  his  name 
in  the  book — which  ordinarily  lies  about  in  such  places, 
to  record  the  faihu-es  of  the  xmtimely  or  mifortuuate 
visitor — and  takes  his  leave  with  many  ceremonies,  and 
professions  of  regret.  Some  two  or  three  liom-s  after, 
liis  walking  destinies  retm-ued  liim  into  the  same  neigh- 
bourhood again,  and  again  the  quiet  image  of  the  fireside 
circle  at  M.'s — Mrs.  M.  presiding  at  it  like  a  Queen  Lar, 
with  pretty  A.  S.  at  her  side — striking  irresistibly  on  his 
fimcy,  he  makes  another  call  (forgetting  tliat  they  were 
"  certainly  not  to  return  from  the  country  before  that 
day  week  "),  and  disappointed  a  second  time,  inquires  for 
pen  and  paper  as  before :  again  the  book  is  brought,  and 
in  the  line  just  above  that  in  which  he  is  about  to  print 
Ins  second  name  (his  re-script) — his  first  name  (scarce 
dry)  looks  out  upon  him  like  another  Sosia,  or  as  if  a 
man  shoidd  suddenly  encounter  his  own  dujjlicate  ! — The 
eft'ect  may  be  conceived.  D.  made  many  a  good  resolu- 
tion against  any  such  lapses  in  futm-e.  I  hope  he  will 
not  keep  them  too  rigorously. 

For  witli  G.  D. — to  be  absent  from  the  Itody,  is  some- 
times (not  to  speak  it  profimely)  to  be  present  wdth  the 
Lord.     At  the  very  time  when,  personally  encountering 

thee,   he   passes    on   with   no  recognition or,   being 

stopped,  starts  like  a  thing  surprised — at  that  moment, 
Reader,  he  is  on  Mount  Tabor — or  Parnassus — or  co- 
sphered  with  Plato  —  or,  with  Harrington,  framing 
"immortal    commonwealths" — devising    some   plan    of 


16  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

amelioration  to   thy  country,   or  thy  species perad- 

veuturc  meditating  some  individual  kindness  or  com'tesy, 
to  be  done  to  thee  thyself,  the  returning  consciousness  of 
which  made  him  to  start  so  guiltily  at  thy  obtruded 
personal  presence. 

[D.  commenced  life,  after  a  course  of  hard  study  in 
the  house  of  "  pm'e  Emanuel,"  as  usher  to  a  knavisli 
fanatic  schoolmaster  at  *  *  *  ,  at  a  salary  of  eight  pomids 
per  annum,  with  board  and  lodging.  Of  this  po(n'  stipend, 
he  never  received  above  half  in  all  the  laborious  y(!ars  he 
served  this  man.  He  tells  a  pleasant  anecdote,  that  when 
poverty,  staring  out  at  his  ragged  knees,  has  sometimes 
compelled  him,  against  the  modesty  of  his  nature,  to  hint 
at  arrears.  Dr.  *  *  *  would  take  no  immediate  notice,  but 
after  supper,  when  the  school  was  called  together  to  even- 
song, he  would  never  fail  to  introduce  some  instructive 
homily  against  riches,  and  the  corruption  of  the  heart 
occasioned  through  the  desire  of  them — ending  with 
"  Lord,  keep  Thy  servants,  above  all  things,  from  the 
heinous  sin  of  avarice.  Having  food  and  raiment,  let  us 
therewithal  be  content.  Give  me  Agur's  wish" — and  the 
like — which,  to  tlie  little  auditory,  soimded  like  a  doctrine 
full  of  Christian  prudence  and  simplicity,  but  to  poor  D. 
was  a  receipt  in  full  for  that  quarter's  demand  at  least. 

And  D.  has  been  under-working  for  himself  ever  since  ; 
— drudging  at  low  rates  for  unappreciating  booksellers, 
— wasting  his  iine  erudition  in  silent  corrections  of  the 
classics,  and  in  those  unostentatious  but  solid  services  to 
learning  which  commonly  fall  to  the  lot  of  laborious 
scholars,  who  have  not  the  heart  to  sell  themselves  to  the 
best  advantage.  He  has  jjublished  poems,  which  do  not 
sell,  because  their  character  is  unobtrusive,  like  his  own, 
and  because  he  has  been  too  much  absorbed  in  ancient 
literature  to  know  what  the  popular  mark  in  poetry  is, 
even  if  lie  could  have  hit  it.  And,  therefore,  his  verses 
are  properly,  what  he  terms  them,  crotchets  ;  voluntaries  ; 
odes  to  liberty  and  spring  ;  effusions  ;  little  trilnites  and 
offerings,  left  behind  him  n])on  tables  and  window-S(jats 


CHRIST  S  HOSPITAL  FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.    17 

at  parting  from  fricjids'  liouses ;  and  from  all  the  inns  of 
hospitality,  where  he  has  been  courteously  (or  hut  toler- 
ably) received  in  his  pilgrimage.  If  his  muse  of  kindness 
halt  a  little  behind  the  strong  lines  in  fashion  in  this 
excitement-loving  age,  his  prose  is  the  best  of  the  sort  in 
the  world,  and  exhibits  a  faithful  transcript  of  his  own 
healthy,  natm-al  mind,  and  cheerful,  imio(;ent  tone  of  con- 
versation.] 

J),  is  delightful  anywhere,  but  he  is  at  the  best  in 
such  places  as  these.  He  cares  not  much  for  Bath.  He 
is  out  of  his  element  at  Buxton,  at  Scarborough,  or 
Harrowgate.  The  Cam  and  the  Isis  are  to  him  "  better 
than  all  the  waters  of  Damascus."  On  the  Muses'  hill 
he  is  happy,  and  good,  as  one  of  the  Shepherds  on  the 
Delectable  Mountains ;  and  when  he  goes  about  with 
you  to  show  you  the  halls  and  colleges,  you  think  you 
have  with  you  the  Interpreter  at  the  House  Beautiful. 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL 

FIVE    AND   THIRTY   YEARS   AGO. 

In  Mr.  Lamb's  "  Works,"  published  a  year  or  two  since, 
I  find  a  magnificent  eulogy  on  my  old  school,  ^  such  as  it 
was,  or  now  appears  to  him  to  have  been,  between  the 
years  1782  and  1789.  It  hapi^ens,  very  oddly,  that  my 
own  standing  at  Christ's  was  nearly  corresponding  with 
his ;  and,  with  all  gratitude  to  him  for  his  enthusiasm 
for  the  cloisters,  I  think  he  has  contrived  to  bring  to- 
gether whatever  can  be  said  in  praise  of  them,  dropping 
all  the  other  side  of  the  argument  most  ingeniously. 

I  remember  L.  at  school ;  and  can  well  recollect  that 
he  had  some  peculiar  advantages,  which  I  and  others  of 
his  schoolfellows  had  not.  His  friends  lived  in  town,  and 
were  near  at  hand  ;  and  he  had  the  privilege  of  going  t ) 

1  Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital. 
C 


18  THE  KSSAYS  OF  FAAA. 

see  tiiciii,  Jiliuost  ;i«  often  ;i.s  he  wi.shed,  tlirniiL;'li  soiiic 
invidious  distinction,  which  was  denied  to  us.  The  pre- 
sent worthy  sub-treasurer  to  the  Inner  Temple  can  explain 
how  that  happened.  He  had  his  tea  and  hot  rolls  in  a 
niorning,  while  we  were  battening  upon  our  quarter  of  a 
penny  loaf — our  crug — moistened  with  attenuated  small 
beer,  in  wooden  piggins,  smacking  of  the  pitched  leathern 
jack  it  was  poured  from.  Om-  Monday's  milk  ])orritch, 
blue  and  tasteless,  and  the  pease  soup  of  Saturday,  coarse 
and  choking,  were  enriched  for  him  with  a  slice  of  "  ex- 
traordinary bread  and  butter,"  from  the  hot-loaf  of  the 
Temple.  The  Wednesday's  mess  of  millet,  somewhat 
less  repugnant  (we  had  three  banyan  to  foiu*  meat  days  in 
the  week) — was  endeared  to  his  palate  with  a  lump  of 
double-refined,  and  a  smack  of  ginger  (to  make  it  go  down 
the  more  glibly)  or  the  fragrant  cinnamon.  In  lieu  of 
our  half-pickled  Sundays,  or  qidte  fresh  boiled  beef  on 
Thursdays  (strong  as  caro  equina),  with  detestable  mari- 
golds floating  in  the  pail  to  poison  the  broth — our  scanty 
mutton  scrags  on  Fridays — and  rather  more  savomy,  but 
grudging,  portions  of  the  same  flesh,  rotten -roasted  or 
rare,  on  the  Tuesdays  (the  only  dish  which  excited  our 
appetites,  and  disappointed  our  stomachs,  in  almost  erpial 
proportion) — he  had  his  hot  plate  of  roast  veal,  or  the 
more  tempting  griskin  (exotics  unknown  to  our  palates), 
cooked  in  the  paternal  kitchen  (a  great  thing),  and 
brought  him  daily  by  his  maid  or  aunt  !  I  remember 
the  good  old  relative  (in  whom  love  forbade  pride)  squat- 
ting down  upon  some  odd  stone  in  a  by-nook  of  the  clois- 
ters, disclosing  the  viands  (of  higher  regale  than  those 
cates  which  the  ravens  ministered  to  the  Tishbite);  and 
the  contending  passions  of  L.  at  the  unfolding.  There 
was  love  for  the  bringer ;  shame  for  the  thing  brought, 
and  the  manner  of  its  bringing ;  sympathy  for  those  who 
were  too  many  to  share  in  it ;  and,  at  top  of  all,  hunger 
(eldest,  strongest  of  the  passions  !)  predominant,  breaking 
down  the  stony  fences  of  shame,  and  awkwardness,  and  a 
troubling  over-consciousness. 


CHRISTS  HOSPITAl.  FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YJilAnS  AdO.    19 

I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.  My  parents,  and  those 
who  shouhl  care  for  me,  were  far  away.  Those  few 
acquaintances  of  theirs,  which  they  could  reckon  upon  as 
being  kind  to  me  in  the  great  city,  after  a  little  forced 
notice,  which  they  had  the  grace  to  take  of  me  on  my 
first  arrival  in  town,  soon  grew  tired  of  my  holiday  visits. 
They  seemed  to  them  to  recm^  too  often,  though  I  thought 
them  few  enough ;  and,  one  after  another,  they  all  failed 
me,  and  I  felt  myself  alone  among  six  hundred  play- 
mates. 

0  the  cruelty  of  separating  a  poor  lad  from  his  early 
homestead !  The  yearnings  which  I  used  to  have  to- 
wards it  in  those  unfledged  years  !  How,  in  my  dreams, 
would  my  native  town  (for  in  the  west)  come  back,  with 
its  chm-ch,  and  trees,  and  faces  !  How  I  would  wake 
weeping,  and  in  the  anguish  of  my  heart  exclaim  upon 
sweet  Calne  in  Wiltshire  ! 

To  this  late  horn-  of  my  life,  I  trace  impressions  left 
by  the  recollection  of  those  friendless  holidays.  The  long 
warm  days  of  summer  never  retmii  but  they  bring  with 
them  a  gloom  from  the  haunting  memory  of  those  rvhole- 
day  leaves,  when,  by  some  strange  arrangement,  we  were 
tm-ned  out,  for  the  live-long  day,  upon  om-  own  hands, 
whether  we  had  friends  to  go  to,  or  none.  I  remember 
those  bathing-excirrsions  to  the  New  Eivcr,  which  L. 
recalls  with  such  relish,  better,  I  think,  than  he  can — for 
he  was  a  home-seeking  lad,  and  did  not  much  care  for  such 
water-pastimes  : — How  merrily  we  would  sally  forth  into 
the  fields ;  and  strip  under  the  first  warmth  of  the  sim ; 
and  wanton  like  young  dace  in  the  streams ;  getting  us 
appetites  for  noon,  which  those  of  us  that  were  penniless 
(om*  scanty  morning  crust  long  since  exhausted)  had  not 
the  means  of  allaying — while  the  cattle,  and  the  birds, 
and  the  fishes,  were  at  feed  about  us,  and  we  had  nothing 
to  satisfy  our  cravings — ^the  very  beauty  of  the  day,  and 
the  exercise  of  the  pastime,  and  the  sense  of  liberty, 
setting  a  keener  edge  upon  them  ! — How  faint  and  lan- 
guid, finally,  we  would  return,  towards  night-fall,  to  our 


20  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EIJA. 

desired  morsel,  half- rejoicing,  half- reluctant,  that  the 
liours  of  our  uneasy  lilierty  had  expired  ! 

It  was  worse  in  the  days  of  winter,  to  go  i^rowling 
about  the  streets  objectless — shivering  at  cold  windows  of 
l)riut  shops,  to  extract  a  little  amusement ;  or  haply,  as  a 
last  resort,  in  the  hopes  of  a  little  novelty,  to  pay  a  fifty- 
times  repeated  visit  (where  our  individual  faces  should  be  as 
well  known  to  the  warden  as  those  of  his  own  charges) 
to  the  Lions  in  the  Tower — to  whose  levde,  by  courtesy 
immemorial,  we  had  a  iDrescriptive  title  to  admission. 

L.'s  governor  (so  we  called  the  j)atron  who  presented 
us  to  the  foiindation)  lived  in  a  manner  under  his  internal 
roof.  Any  complaint  wliicli  he  had  to  make  was  siu-e  of 
being  attended  to.  This  was  imderstood  at  Christ's,  and 
was  an  effectual  screen  to  him  against  the  severity  of 
masters,  or  worse  tyranny  of  the  monitors.  The  oppres- 
sions of  these  young  brutes  are  heart-sickening  to  call  to 
recollection.  I  have  been  called  out  of  my  bed,  and  ivalced 
for  the  2nirpose,  in  the  coldest  winter  nights — and  this  not 
once,  but  night  after  night — in  my  shirt,  to  receive  the 
discipline  of  a  leathern  thong,  with  eleven  other  sufferers, 
because  it  pleased  my  callow  overseer,  when  there  has  been 
any  talking  heard  after  we  were  gone  to  bed,  to  make  the 
six  last  beds  in  the  dormitory,  where  tlie  youngest  children 
of  us  slei)t,  answeral)le  for  an  offence  they  neither  dared  to 
commit,  nor  had  the  power  to  hinder.  —  The  same  exe- 
crable tyranny  drove  the  younger  part  of  us  from  the  fires, 
when  our  feet  were  perishing  with  snow ;  and,  under  the 
cruellest  penalties,  forbade  the  indulgence  of  a  ilrink  of 
water,  when  we  lay  in  sleepless  summer  nights,  fevered 
with  the  season  and  the  day's  sports. 

There  was  one  H ,  who,  I  learned  in  after  days, 

was  seen  expiating  some  maturer  offence  in  the  hulks. 
(Do  I  flatter  myself  in  fancying  that  this  might  be  the 
planter  of  that  name,  who  sutfered — at  Nevis,  I  thiidv,  or 
St.  Kitts, — some  few  years  since  l  My  friend  Tobin  was 
the  benevolent  instrument  of  bringing  him  to  the  gallows.) 
This  petty  Nero  actually  branded  a  boy,  who  had  offended 


Christ's  hospital  five  and  thirty  years  aoo.  21 

him,  with  a  red-hot  iron  ;  and  nearly  starved  forty  of  ns, 
with  exacting  contributions,  to  the  one  half  of  our  bread, 
to  pamper  a  yoimg  ass,  which,  incredible  as  it  may  seem, 
with  the  connivance  of  the  nurse's  daughter  (a  young 
flame  of  his)  he  had  contrived  to  snniggle  in,  and  keep 
upon  the  leads  of  the  ivard,  as  they  called  our  dormitories. 
This  game  went  on  for  better  than  a  week,  till  the 
foolish  beast,  not  able  to  fare  well  but  he  nuxst  cry  roast 
meat — happier  than  Caligida's  minion,  could  lie  have  kept 
his  own  counsel — but,  foolisher,  alas  !  than  any  of  his 
species  in  the  fobles — waxing  fat,  and  kicking,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  bread,  one  unlucky  minute  would  needs  proclaim 
his  good  fortune  to  the  world  below ;  and,  laying  out  his 
simple  throat,  blew  such  a  ram's  horn  blast,  as  (toppling 
down  the  walls  of  his  own  Jericho)  set  concealment  any 
longer  at  defiance.  The  client  was  dismissed,  with  certain 
attentions,  to  Smithfield ;  but  I  never  understood  that 
the  patron  underwent  any  censm'e  on  the  occasion.  This 
was  in  the  stewardship  of  L.'s  admired  Perry. 

Under  the  same  facile  administration,  can  L.  have  for- 
gotten the  cool  impunity  with  which  the  nurses  used  to 
carry  away  ojjcnly,  in  open  platters,  for  their  own  tables, 
one  out  of  two  of  every  hot  joint,  which  the  careful 
matron  had  been  seeing  scrupulously  weighed  out  for  our 
dinners  1  These  things  were  daily  practised  in  that 
magnificent  apartment,  which  L.  (gi'own  connoisseiu"  since, 
we  presume)  praises  so  highly  for  the  grand  paintings 
"by  Verrio  and  others,"  with  which  it  is  "hung  romid 
and  adorned."  But  the  sight  of  sleek  well-fed  l:)lue-coat 
boys  in  pictures  was,  at  that  time,  I  lielieve,  little  con- 
solatory to  him,  or  us,  the  living  ones,  who  saw  the  better 
]);u-t  of  our  provisions  carried  away  befoi'c  om-  faces  by 
liarpies  ;  and  ourselves  reduced  (with  the  Trojan  in  the 
hall  of  Dido) 

To  feed  onr  miiul  with  idle  portraiture. 

L.  has  recorded  the  repugnance  of  the  school  to  gags, 
or  the  fat  of  fresh  beef  boiled ;  and  sets  it  down  to  some 


22  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

superstition.  But  tlicse  unctuous  morsels  are  never  gi-ate- 
ful  to  young  palates  (children  are  imiversally  fot-haters), 
and  ill  strong,  coarse,  boiled  meats,  wisdlted,  are  detcst- 
a1)lt'.     A  (pt(j-eatvr  in  our  time  wits  equivalent  to  a  gonle^ 

and  held  in  equal  detestation.     sufl'ered  under  the 

imputation  : 

....   'Twas  said 
He  ate  strauge  flesh. 

He  was  observed,  after  dinner,  carefully  to  gather  uj) 
the  remnants  left  at  his  table  {not  many,  nor  very  choice 
fragments,  you  may  credit  me)  —  and,  in  an  especial 
manner,  these  disreputable  morsels,  which  he  woiild  convey 
away,  and  secretly  stow  in  the  settle  that  stood  at  his  bed- 
side. None  saw  when  he  ate  them.  It  was  rumoured  that 
he  privately  devoured  them  in  the  night.  He  was  watched, 
but  no  traces  of  such  midnight  practices  were  discoverable. 
Some  reported,  that,  on  leave-days,  he  had  been  seen  to 
carry  out  of  the  Ijounds  a  large  blue  check  handkerchief, 
full  of  something.  This  then  must  l>e  the  accursed  thing. 
Conjecture  ne.Kt  was  at  work  to  imagine  how  he  coidd 
dispose  of  it.  Some  said  he  sold  it  to  the  beggars.  This 
belief  generally  prevailed.  He  went  about  moi:)ing.  N(jne 
spake  to  him.  No  one  would  play  with  him.  He  was 
excommunicated  ;  put  out  of  the  pale  of  the  school.  He 
was  too  powerful  a  boy  to  be  beaten,  but  he  underwent 
every  mode  of  that  negative  i^unishment,  which  is  more 
grievous  than  many  stripes.  Still  he  persevered.  At 
length  he  was  observed  by  two  of  his  schoolfellows,  who 
were  determined  to  get  at  the  secret,  and  had  traced  him 
one  leave-day  for  that  purpose,  to  enter  a  large  worn-out 
building,  such  as  there  exist  specimens  of  in  Chancery 
Lane,  which  are  let  out  to  various  scales  of  pauj)erism,  with 
open  door,  and  a  common  staircase.  After  him  they  silently 
slunk  in,  and  followed  by  stealth  up  four  flights,  and  saw 
him  tap  at  a  poor  \\dcket,  which  was  opened  by  an  aged 
woman,  meauly  clad.  Suspicion  was  now  ripened  into 
certainty.     The  infoi'mers  had  secured  their  victim.     They 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.    23 

had  him  in  their  toils.  Accusation  was  formally  preferred, 
and  retribution  most  signal  was  looked  for.  Mr.  Hathaway, 
the  then  steward  (for  this  happened  a  little  after  my  time), 
with  that  patient  sagacity  which  tempennl  all  his  (conduct, 
determined  to  investigate  the  matter,  before  he  prix^eeded  to 
sentence.  The  result  was,  that  the  supposed  mendi(^ants, 
the  receivers  or  purchasers  of  the  mysterious  s(;raps,  tm-ned 

out  to  be  the  parents  of ,  an  honest  couple  come  to 

decay, — whom  this  seasonable  sui)ply  had,  in  all  proba- 
bility, saved  from  mendicancy :  and  that  this  young  stork, 
at  the  expense  of  his  own  good  name,  had  all  this  while 
been  only  feeding  the  old  birds  ! — The  governors  on  this 
o(H'a,sion,  much  to  their  honoiu-,  voted  a  i)resent  relief  to  the 

family  of  ■ ,  and  liresented  him  with  a  silver  medal. 

Tlie  lesson  which  the  steward  read  ujjon  hash  juixjment, 

on  the  occasion  of  publicly  delivering  tlu^  medal  to , 

I  believe,  would  not  be  lost  upon  his  auditory. — I  had 

left  school  then,  l)ut  I  well  remendjer  ■ .     He  was  a 

tall,  shandjling  youth,  with  a  cast  in  his  eye,  not  at  all 
calculated  to  conciliate  hostile  prejudices.  I  have  since 
seen  him  carrying  a  baker's  basket.  I  think  I  heard  he 
did  not  do  quite  so  well  l)y  himself  as  he  had  done  by 
the  old  folks. 

I  was  a  hypochondriac  lad  ;  and  the  sight  of  a  boy  in 
fetters,  upon  the  day  of  my  first  putting  on  the  blue 
clothes,  was  not  exactly  fitted  to  assuage  the  natm-al 
terrors  of  initiation.  I  was  of  tender  years,  barely  turned 
of  seven ;  and  had  only  read  of  such  things  in  books,  or 
seen  them  but  in  dreams.  I  was  told  he  had  rnn  away. 
This  was  the  punishment  for  the  first  offence. — As  a  novice 
I  was  soon  after  taken  to  sec  the  dmigeons.  These;  were 
little,  square.  Bedlam  cells,  where  a  boy  coidd  just  lie  at 
his  length  upon  straw  and  a  blanket — a  mattress,  I  think, 
was  afterwards  substituted — with  a  peep  of  light,  let  in 
askance,  from  a  prison-orifice  at  top,  barely  enough  to  read 
by.  Here  the  poor  boy  was  locked  in  by  himself  all  day, 
without  sight  of  any  but  the  porter  who  brought  him  his 
bread  and  water — who  might  not  sjjeak  to  him  ; — or  of  the 


24  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

beadle,  who  came  twice  a  week  to  call  him  oixt  to  receive 
his  periodical  chastisement,  which  was  almost  welcome, 
because  it  separated  him  for  a  brief  interval  from  solitude : 
« — and  here  he  was  shut  up  by  himself  of  nights,  out  of  the 
reach  of  any  soimd,  to  suffer  whatever  horrors  the  weak 
nerves,  and  superstition  incident  to  his  time  of  Hfe,  might 
subject  him  to.^  This  was  the  penalty  for  the  second 
offence.  Wouldst  thou  like,  Eeader,  to  see  what  became  of 
him  in  the  next  degree  1 

The  culprit,  who  had  been  a  third  time  an  offender,  and 
whose  expulsion  was  at  this  time  deemed  irreversible,  was 
brought  forth,  as  at  some  solemn  auto  da  fe,  arrayed  in 
uncouth  and  most  appalling  attire,  all  trace  of  his  late 
"  watchet- weeds  "  carefully  effaced,  he  was  exposed  in  a 
jacket,  resembling  those  which  London  lamplighters  for- 
merly delighted  in,  with  a  cap  of  the  same.  The  effect  of 
this  divestitm-e  was  such  as  the  ingenious  devisers  of  it 
could  have  anticipated.  With  his  pale  and  frightened 
features,  it  was  as  if  some  of  those  disfigm-ements  in  Dante 
had  seized  upon  him.  In  this  disg-uisement  he  was  brought 
into  the  hall  {L.'s  favourite  state-room), vfhere  awaited  him 
the  whole  number  of  his  schoolfellows,  whose  joint  lessons 
and  sports  he  was  thenceforth  to  share  no  more  ;  the  awful 
presence  of  the  steward,  to  be  seen  for  the  last  time ;  of 
the  executioner  beadle,  clad  in  his  state  robe  for  the 
occasion  ;  and  of  two  faces  more,  of  direr  import,  because 
never  but  in  these  extremities  visible.  These  were  gov- 
ernors ;  two  of  whom,  by  choice,  or  charter,  were  always 
accustomed  to  officiate  at  these  Ultima  Sup2:>licia;  not 
to  mitigate  (so  at  least  we  understood  it),  but  to  enforce 
the  uttermost  stripe.  Old  Bamber  Gascoigne,  and  Peter 
Aultert,  I  remember,  were  coUeagiies  on  one  occasion, 
when  the  beadle  turning  rather  pale,  a  glass  of  brandy  was 

^  One  or  two  instances  of  lunacy,  or  attempted  suicide,  accord- 
ingly, at  length  convinced  the  go\'ernors  of  the  impolicy  of  this 
part  of  the  sentence,  and  the  midnight  torture  to  the  sjnrits  was 
dispensed  with. — This  fancy  of  dungeons  for  children  was  a  sprout 
of  Howard's  brain  ;  for  which  (saving  the  reverence  due  to  Holy 
Paul)  mcthinks  I  could  willingly  spit  upon  his  statue. 


Christ's  hospital  hve  and  thirty  years  ago.  25 

ordered  to  prepare  him  for  the  mysteries.  The  scom-ging 
was,  after  the  old  Roman  fashion,  long  and  stately.  The 
lictor  accompanied  the  criminal  quite  round  the  hall.  We 
were  generally  too  faint  with  attending  to  the  previous 
disgusting  circumstances  to  make  accm'ate  report  with 
our  eyes  of  the  degree  of  corj^oral  suft'ering  inflicted. 
Report,  of  course,  gave  out  the  back  knotty  and  livid. 
After  scourging,  he  was  uiat'e  over,  in  his  San  Benito,  to 
his  friends,  if  he  had  any  (but  commonly  such  poor  run- 
agates were  friendless),  or  to  his  paiish  oflicer,  who,  to 
enhance  the  eff'ect  of  the  scene,  had  his  station  allotted 
to  him  on  the  outside  of  the  hall  gate. 

These  solemn  pageantries  were  not  played  off  so  often 
as  to  spoil  the  general  mirth  of  the  community.  We  had 
plenty  of  exercise  and  recreation  after  school  hom"S  ;  and, 
for  myself,  I  must  confess,  that  I  was  never  happier  than 
in  them.  The  Upper  and  the  Lower  Grammar  Schools 
were  held  in  the  same  I'oom  •  and  an  imaginary  line  only 
divided  their  bounds.  Their  character  was  as  different  as 
that  of  the  inhabitants  on  the  two  sides  of  the  Pyrenees. 
The  Rev.  James  Boyer  was  tlie  Upper  Master,  l)ut  the 
Rev.  Matthew  Field  presided  over  that  portion  of  the 
apartment,  of  which  I  had  the  good  fortmie  to  be  a  mem- 
ber. We  lived  a  life  as  careless  as  birds.  We  talked  and 
did  just  what  we  pleased,  and  nobody  molested  us.  We 
carried  an  accidence,  or  a  grammar,  for  form  ;  but,  for  any 
trouble  it  gave  us,  we  might  take  two  years  in  getting 
thi-ough  the  verbs  deponent,  and  another  two  in  forgetting 
all  that  Ave  had  learned  al)out  them.  There  was  now  and 
then  the  formality  of  saying  a  lesson,  but  if  you  had  not 
learned  it,  a  brush  across  the  shoulders  (just  enough  to 
disturl)  a  fly)  was  the  sole  remonstrance.  Field  never  used 
the  rod ;  and  in  truth  he  wielded  the  cane  with  no  great 
good  will — holding  it  "like  a  dancer."  It  looked  in  his 
hands  rather  like  an  endilem  than  an  instrument  of  autho- 
rity; and  an  eml)lem,  too,  he  was  ashamed  of.  He  was  a 
good  easy  man,  that  did  not  care  to  ruffle  his  own  peace, 
nor  perhaps  set  any  great  consideration  upon  the  value  of 


26  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

juvenile  time.  He  came  among  us,  now  and  then,  but 
often  staid  away  whole  days  from  us  ;  and  \\lien  he  came, 
it  made  no  difference  to  us — he  had  his  private  room  to 
retire  to,  the  short  time  he  staid,  to  be  out  of  the  sound 
of  oiu'  noise.  Our  mirth  and  ujjroar  went  on.  We  had 
classics  of  our  own,  without  being  beholden  to  "insolent 
Greece  or  haughty  Rome,"  that  passed  current  among  us — • 
Peter  Wilkins — The  Adventm-es  of  the  Hon.  Captain  Robert 
Boyle — the  Fortunate  Blue-coat  Boy — and  the  like.  Or  we 
cultivated  a  tmni  for  mechanic  and  scientific  operations ; 
making  little  sun-dials  of  paper ;  or  weaving  those  in- 
genious parentheses,  called  cat-cradles;  or  making  dry  peas 
to  dance  upon  the  end  of  a  tin  pipe  ;  or  studying  the  art 
military  over  that  laxidalile  game  "  Fren(^h  and  English," 
and  a  hundred  other  sucli  devices  to  pass  away  the  time — 
mixing  the  useful  with  the  agreeable — as  would  have 
made  the  souls  of  Rousseau  and  John  Locke  chuckh;  to 
have  seen  us. 

Matthew  Field  belonged  to  that  class  of  modest 
divines  who  affect  to  mix  in  e(pial  proportion  the  gentle- 
man, the  scholar,  and  the  Christian ;  Imt,  I  know  not 
how,  the  first  ingredient  is  generally  found  to  be  the  pre- 
dominating dose  in  the  composition.  He  was  engaged  in 
gay  parties,  or  with  his  coiu-tly  bow  at  some  episcopal 
levde,  when  he  shoidd  have  been  attending  upon  us.  He 
had  for  many  years  the  classical  charge  of  a  hundred  child- 
ren, during  the  four  or  five  first  years  of  their  education ; 
and  his  very  highest  form  seldom  proceeded  further  than 
two  or  three  of  the  introductory  fixbles  of  Phtedi"us.  How 
things  were  suftered  to  go  on  thus,  I  cannot  guess.  Boyer, 
who  was  the  proper  j^erson  to  have  remedied  these  abuses, 
always  affected,  perhaps  felt,  a  delicacy  in  interfering  in 
a  province  not  strictly  his  own.  I  have  not  been  without 
my  suspicions,  that  he  was  not  altogether  displeased  at 
the  contrast  we  presented  to  his  end  of  the  school.  We 
were  a  sort  of  Helots  to  his  young  Spartans.  He  woiUd 
sometimes,  with  ironic  deference,  send  to  borrow  a  rod  of 
tlie  Under  Master,  and  then,  with  Sardonic  grin,  observe 


Christ's  hospital  five  and  thirty  years  ago.  27 

to  one  of  his  upper  boys,  "  how  neat  and  fresh  the  twigs 
looked."  While  his  pale  students  were  battering  their 
brains  over  Xenophon  and  Plato,  with  a  silence  as  deep 
as  that  enjoined  by  the  Samite,  we  were  enjojnng  our- 
selves at  oiu-  ease  in  our  little  Goshen.  We  saw  a  little 
into  the  secrets  of  his  discipline,  and  the  prospe(;t  did  but 
the  more  reconcile  us  to  oiu-  lot.  His  thunders  rolled 
innocuous  for  u>s  ;  his  storms  came  near,  but  never  touched 
us ;  contrary  to  Gideon's  miracle,  while  all  around  Avere 
drenched,  om-  fleece  was  dry.^  His  boys  tm-ned  out  the 
better  scholars;  we,  I  suspect,  have  the  advantage  in 
temper.  His  pupils  cannot  speak  of  him  wdthout  some- 
thing of  terror  allaying  their  gratitude  ;  the  remembrance 
of  Field  comes  back  with  all  the  soothing  images  of 
indolence,  and  summer  shunbers,  and  work  like  play,  and 
innocent  idleness,  and  Elysian  exemptions,  and  life  itself 
a  "playing  holiday." 

Though  sufficiently  removed  from  the  jurisdiction  of 
Boyer,  we  were  near  enough  (as  I  have  said)  to  imder- 
staud  a  little  of  his  system.  Wc  occasionally  heard  sounds 
t)f  the  Ululantea,  and  caught  glances  of  Tartai-us.  B.  was 
a  rabid  pedant.  His  English  style  was  (-ranqit  to  barbar- 
ism. His  Easter  anthems  (for  his  duty  obliged  him  to 
those  periodical  flights)  were  gi-ating  as  scrannel  pipes.  ^ 
— He  woidd  laugh — ay,  and  heartily — ^but  then  it  must 

he  at  Flaccus's  quibble  about  Itcx or  at  the  tristis 

severitas  in  mdtu,  or  inspicere  in  j^'iiinas,  of  Terence — 
tliin  jests,  which  at  their  fii'st  broaching  could  hardly  have 
liad  vis  enough  to  move  a  Roman  muscle. — He  had  two 

^  Cowley. 

-  In  this  and  everj'thing  B.  was  the  antipodes  of  his  coadjutor. 
While  the  foi-mer  was  digging  his  brains  for  crude  anthems,  worth 
a  pig-nut,  F.  would  be  recreating  his  gentlemanly  fancy  in  the  more 
flowery  walks  of  the  Muses.  A  little  dramatic  effusion  of  his,  under 
the  name  of  Vertunmus  and  Pomona,  is  not  yet  forgotten  by  the 
chroniclers  of  that  sort  of  literature.  It  was  accepted  by  Garrick, 
but  the  town  did  not  give  it  their  sanction. — B.  used  to  say  of  it, 
in  a  way  of  half-coniplinient,  half-irony,  that  it  was  too  classical 
for  rcjrrescntation. 


28  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

wigs,  both  iiedantic,  but  of  different  omen.  The  one 
serene,  smiling,  fresli  powdered,  betokening  a  mild  day. 
The  other,  an  old  discolom-ed,  unkempt,  angry  caxon,  de- 
noting frequent  and  bloody  execution.  Woe  to  the  school, 
when  he  made  his  morning  appearance  in  his  ^^'ftss^',  or 
2Kissio7iate  tvig.  No  comet  expounded  sm-er. — J.  B.  had 
a  heavy  hand.  I  have  known  him  double  his  knotty  fist 
at  a  poor  trembling  child  (the  maternal  milk  hardly  dry 
upon  its  lips)  with  a  "  Sirrah,  do  you  jM-esume  to  set  your 
wits  at  me  1" — Nothing  was  more  common  than  to  see 
him  make  a  headlong  entry  into  the  school-room,  from  his 
inner  recess,  or  library,  and,  with  tm-bident  eye,  singling 
out  a  lad,  roar  out,  "  Od's  my  life,  su-rah"  (his  ftivourite 
adjm'ation),  "  I  have  a  great  mind  to  whip  you," — then, 
with  as  sudden  a  retracting  impulse,  fling  back  into  his 
lair — and,  after  a  cooling  lapse  of  some  minutes  (during 
which  all  but  the  cul^jrit  had  totally  forgotten  the  context) 
drive  headlong  out  again,  piecing  out  his  imperfect  sense, 
as  if  it  had  been  some  Devil's  Litany,  with  the  expletory 
yell — "  and  I  avill  too." — In  his  gentler  moods,  when 
the  rabidtcs  furor  was  assuaged,  he  had  resort  to  an  in- 
genious method,  peculiar,  for  what  I  have  heard,  to  him- 
self, of  whipping  the  boy,  and  reading  the  Debates,  at  the 
same  time ;  a  paragraph  and  a  lash  between ;  which  in 
those  times,  when  parliamentary  oratory  was  most  at  a 
height  and  flourishing  in  these  realms,  was  not  calculated 
to  impress  the  patient  with  a  veneration  for  the  ditt'user 
graces  of  rhetoric. 

Once,  and  but  once,  the  ujjlifted  rod  was  known  to  foil 

inefi'ectual  from  his  hand — when  droll  squinting  W 

having  been  caught  putting  the  inside  of  the  master's  desk 
to  a  use  for  wliich  the  architect  had  clearly  not  designed 
it,  to  justify  himself,  with  great  simplicity  averred,  that 
he  did  not  knoiv  that  the  thing  had  been  forewarned.  This 
exquisite  irrecognition  of  any  law  antecedent  to  the  o7xd 
or  declarator^/,  struck  so  ii-resistibly  upon  the  fancy  of  all 
who  heard  it  (the  pedagogue  himself  not  excepted)  that 
remission  was  unavoidal)lc. 


Christ's  hospital  five  and  thirty  years  ago.  :19 

L.  has  given  credit  to  B.'s  great  merits  as  an  instrnctor. 
Coleridge,  in  his  literary  life,  has  pronounced  a  more  in- 
telhgible  and  ample  encomium  on  them.  The  author  of 
the  Country  Spectator  doubts  not  to  compare  him  with 
the  ablest  teachers  of  antiquity.  Perhaps  we  cannot  dis- 
miss him  better  than  with  the  pious  ejaculation  of  C. — 
when  he  heard  that  his  old  master  was  on  his  death-bed  : 
"  Poor  J.  B.  ! — may  all  his  faults  be  forgiven  ;  and  may 
he  be  wafted  to  bliss  by  little  cherulj  boys,  all  head  and 
wings,  with  no  hottoms  to  reproach  his  sublunary  in- 
firmities." 

Under  him  were  many  good  and  sound  scholars  bred. 
— First  Grecian  of  my  time  was  Lancelot  Pepys  Stevens, 
kindest  of  boys  and  men,  since  Co-granmiar-master  (and 
inseparable  companion)  with  Dr.  T  e.  What  an 
edifjing  spectacle  did  this  brace  of  friends  present  to  those 
who  remembered  the  anti-socialities  of  their  predecessors  ! 
— You  never  met  the  one  by  chance  in  the  street  without 
a  wonder,  Avhich  was  quickly  dissipated  by  the  almost 
immediate  subappearance  of  the  other.  Generally  arm- 
in-arm,  these  kindly  coadjutors  lightened  for  each  other 
the  toilsome  duties  of  their  profession,  and  when,  in 
advanced  age,  one  found  it  convenient  to  reth-e,  the  other 
was  not  long  in  discovering  that  it  suited  him  to  lay  down 
the  fasces  also.  Oh,  it  is  pleasant,  as  it  is  rare,  to  find 
the  same  arm  linked  in  yom's  at  forty,  which  at  thu'teen 
helped  it  to  tm-n  over  the  Cicero  De  Amicitid,  or  some 
tale  of  Antique  Friendship,  which  the  young  heart  even 
then  was  burning  to  anticipate  ! — Co-Grecian  with  S.  was 

Th ,  who    has  since   executed  with   al:)ility  various 

diplomatic  functions  at  the  Northern  courts.     Th 

was  a  tall,  dark,  saturnine  youth,  sparing  of  speech,  with 
raven  locks. — Thomas  Fanshaw  ]\Iiddleton  followed  him 
(now  Bishop  of  Calcutta),  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman  in 
his  teens.  He  has  the  reputation  of  an  excellent  critic ; 
and  is  author  (besides  the  Country  Spectator)  of  a  Treatise 
on  the  Greek  Article,  against  Shaxpe. — M.  is  said  to  bear 
his  mitre  high  in  India,  where  the  regni  novitas  (I  dare 


30  TIIK   ESSAYS  OK  ELIA. 

say)  siifliciently  justifies  tlic  bearing.  A  humility  quite 
as  primitive  as  tluit  of  Jewel  or  Hooker  might  not  be 
exactly  fitted  to  impress  the  minds  of  those  Anglo-Asiatic 
diocesans  with  a  reverence  for  home  institutions,  and  the 
chm-ch  whicli  tliose  fathers  watered.  Tlie  manners  of  M. 
at  school,  though  firm,  were  mild  and  unassuming. — Next 
to  M.  (if  not  senior  to  him)  was  Riclumls,  autlior  of  the 
Aboriginal  Britons,  the  most  spirited  of  the  Oxford  Prize 
Poems;  a  pale,  studious  Grecian. — Then  followed  poor 
S ,  ill-fated  M !  of  these  the  Muse  is  silent. 

Finding  some  of  Edward's  race 
Unliappj',  pass  their  annals  by. 

Come  back  into  memory,  like  as  thou  wert  in  tlie  day- 
spring  of  thy  fancies,  with  hoj^e  like  a  fiery  colmnn  before 
thee — the  dark  pillar  not  yet  turned — Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge — Logician,  Metaphysician,  Bard  ! — How  liave 
I  seen  the  casual  passer  through  the  Cloisters  stand  still, 
entranced  with  admiration  (while  he  weighed  the  dispro- 
portion between  the  speech  and  the  r/nrb  of  the  young 
Mirandula),  to  hear  thee  unfold,  in  thy  deep  and  sweet 
intonations,  the  mysteries  of  Jamblichus,  or  Plotinus  (for 
even  in  those  years  thou  waxedst  not  pale  at  such  philo- 
sophic draughts),  or  reciting  Homer  in  his  Greek,  or 
Pindar while  the  walls  of  the  old  Grey  Friars  re- 
echoed to  the  accents  of  the  inspired  cliarity-hoy  ! — Many 
were  the  "wit-combats"  (to  dally  awhile  with  the  words 

of  old  Fuller),  between  him  and  0.  V.  Le  G ,  "  which 

two  I  beliold  like  a  Spanish  great  galleon,  and  an  English 
man  of  war  :  Master  Coleridge,  like  the  former,  was  built 
far  higher  in  learning,  solid,  lint  slow  in  his  performances. 
C.  V.  L.,  with  the  English  man  of  war,  lesser  in  bulk, 
but  lighter  in  sailing,  coidd  turn  with  all  times,  tack 
about,  and  take  advantage  of  all  winds,  by  the  quickness 
of  his  Avit  and  invention." 

Nor  shalt  thou,  their  compeer,  be  quickly  forgotten, 
Allen,  with  the  cordial  smile,  and  still  more  cordial  laugh, 
with  which  thou  wert  wont  to  make  the  old  Cloisters 


THE  TWO  ItACES  OV  MEN.  31 

shake,  iu  thy  coguitioii  of  some  poi,L,aiant  jest  of  theirs; 
or  the  anticipation  of  some  more  material,  and  peradveu- 
tiire  practical  one,  of  thine  own.  Extinct  are  those  smiles, 
with  that  beautiful  countenance,  with  which  (for  thou 
wert  the  Xireus  formosus  of  the  school),  in  the  days  of 
thy  maturer  waggery,  thou  didst  disarm  the  WTath  of 
infuriated  town-damsel,  who,  incensed  by  provoking  pinch, 
tmiiiug  tigress-like    round,    suddenly  converted  by  thy 

angel-look,  exchanged  the  half-formed  terrible  "  bl ," 

for  a  gentler  gi'eeting — "  bless  thy  handsome  f(u:e  !  " 

Next  follow  two,  who  ought  to  be  now  alive,  and  the 

friends  of  Elia — the  jimior  Le  G and  F ;  who 

impelled,  the  former  by  a  roving  temper,  the  latter  by 
too  quick  a  sense  of  neglect — ill  capable  of  endmiug  the 
slights  poor  Sizars  are  sometimes  subject  to  in  om*  seats 
of  learning — exchanged  their  Ahna  Mater  for  the  camp  ; 
perishing,  one  by  climate,  and  one  on  the  plains  of  Sala- 
manca : — Le  G ,    sangiune,  volatile,  sweet-natured  ; 

F ,  dogged,  faithful,  anticipative  of  insult,  warm- 
hearted, with  something  of  the  old  Roman  height  about 
him. 

Fine,   frank-hearted   Fr ,   the  present   master  of 

Hertford,  Avith  Marmaduke  T ,  mildest  of  Missionaries 

— and  both  my  good  friends  still — close  the  catalogue  of 
Grecians  in  my  time. 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN. 

The  human  species,  according  to  the  best  theory  I  can 
form  of  it,  is  composed  of  two  distinct  races,  the  men  who 
borrow,  and  the  men  v)ho  lend.  To  these  two  original 
diversities  may  be  reduced  all  those  impertinent  classi- 
fications of  Gothic  and  Celtic  tribes,  white  men,  black 
men,  red  men.  All  the  dwellers  upon  earth,  "  Parthians, 
and  Medes,  and  Elamites,"  flock  hither,  and  do  naturally 
fall  in  vnth.  one  or  other  of  these  primary  distinctions. 


32  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

The  infinite  superiority  of  the  former,  which  I  chose  to 
designate  as  the  great  race,  is  discernible  in  their  figure, 
port,  and  a  certain  instinctive  sovereignty.  The  latter 
are  born  degraded.  "He  shall  serve  his  brethren." 
There  is  something  in  the  air  of  one  of  this  cast,  lean 
and  suspicious ;  contrasting  with  the  open,  trusting, 
generous  manners  of  the  otlier. 

Observe  who  have  been  the  greatest  borrowers  of  all 
ages — Alci1)iades — Falstatt" — Sir  Richard  Steele — our  late 
incomparable  Brinsley — what  a  family  likeness  in  all 
four ! 

What  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  yom-  borrower  ! 
what  rosy  gills  !  what  a  beautifid  reliance  on  Providence 
doth  he  manifest, — taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies  ! 
What  contempt  for  money, — accounting  it  (yours  and 
mine  especially)  no  better  than  dross !  What  a  liberal 
confounding  of  those  pedantic  distinctions  of  mmm  and 
tuum  !  or  rather,  what  a  noble  simplification  of  language 
(beyond  Tooke),  resolving  these  supposed  opposites  into 
one  clear,  intelligible  pronoun  adjective  !  —  What  near 
approaches  doth  lie  make  to  the  primitive  community, — 
to  the  extent  of  one  half  of  the  principle  at  least. 

He  is  the  true  taxer  who  "  calleth  all  the  world  up  to 
be  taxed ;"  and  the  distance  is  as  vast  between  him  and 
one  of  us,  as  subsisted  between  the  Augustan  Majesty  and 
the  poorest  obolary  Jew  that  paid  it  tribute-pittance  at 
Jerusalem  ! — His  exactions,  too,  have  such  a  cheerful, 
voluntary  air  !  So  fiir  removed  from  your  som'  parochial 
or  state -gatherers,— those  ink-horn  varlets,  who  carry 
their  want  of  welcome  in  their  faces  !  He  cometh  to 
you  with  a  smile,  and  troubleth  you  with  no  receipt ; 
confining  himself  to  no  set  season.  Every  day  is  his 
Candlemas,  or  his  feast  of  Holy  IMichael.  He  applieth 
the  lene  tegmentum  of  a  pleasant  look  to  yom-  purse, ^ — 
which  to  that  gentle  warmth  expands  her  silken  leaves, 
as  natm-ally  as  the  cloak  of  the  traveller,  for  which  sun 
and  wind  contended  !  He  is  the  true  Propontic  which 
never  ebbeth  !     The  sea  which  taketh  handsomely  at  each 


THE  TWO    RACES  OF  MEN.  33 

man's  hand.  In  vain  the  victim,  whom  lie  delii^htcth  to 
honour,  struggles  with  destiny  ;  he  is  in  the  net.  Lend 
therefore  cheerfully,  0  man  ordained  to  lend — that  thou 
lose  not  in  the  end,  with  thy  worldly  penny,  the  rever&'ion 
promised.  Combine  not  preposterously  in  thine  own 
person  the  penalties  (if  Lazarus  and  of  Dives  ! — but,  when 
thou  seest  the  proper  authority  coming,  meet  it  smilingly, 
as  it  were  half-way.  Come,  a  handsome  sacrifice  !  See 
how  light  he  makes  of  it  !  Strain  not  courtesies  with  a 
noble  enemy. 

Reflections  like  the  foregoing  were  forced  upon  my  mind 
by  the  death  of  my  old  friend,  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq.,  who 
parted  this  life  on  Wednesday  evening ;  dying,  as  he  had 
lived,  without  much  trouble.  He  boasted  himself  a  de- 
scendant from  mighty  ancestors  of  that  name,  who  here- 
tofore held  ducal  dignities  in  this  realm.  In  his  actions 
and  sentiments  he  belied  not  the  stock  to  which  he  pre- 
tended. Early  in  life  he  found  himself  invested  with 
ample  revenues  ;  which,  with  that  noble  disinterestedness 
which  I  have  noticed  as  inherent  in  men  of  the  (jreat  race, 
he  took  almost  immediate  measm^es  entirely  to  dissipate 
and  bring  to  nothing  :  for  there  is  something  revolting  in 
the  idea  of  a  king  holding  a  private  pm-se ;  and  the 
thoughts  of  Bigod  were  all  regal.  Thus  ftmiished,  by 
the  very  act  of  disfurnishment ;  getting  rid  of  the  cum- 
bersome luggage  of  riches,  more  apt  (as  one  sings) 

To  slacken  virtue,  and  abate  her  edge, 

Than  prompt  her  to  do  aught  may  merit  praise, 

he  set  forth,  like  some  Alexander,  upon  his  great  enter- 
prise, "  borrowing  and  to  borrow  !  " 

In  his  periegesis,  or  triumphant  progi'css  throughout 
this  island,  it  has  been  calculated  that  he  laid  a  tythe 
part  of  the  inhabitants  under  contribution.  I  reject  this 
estimate  as  greatly  exaggerated : — but  having  had  the 
honour  of  accompanying  my  friend,  divers  times,  in  his 
peramliulations  aliout  this  vast  city,  I  own  I  was  greatly 
struck  at  first  with  tlie  prodigious  nundier  of  faces  we 
D 


34  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

met,  who  claimed  a  sort  of  respectful  acquaiutance  with 
lis.  He  was  one  day  so  obliging  as  to  exjilain  the  phe- 
nomenon. It  seems,  these  were  his  tributaries ;  feeders 
of  his  exchequer ;  gentlemen,  his  good  friends  (as  he  was 
pleased  to  express  himself),  to  whom  he  had  occasionally 
been  beholden  for  a  loan.  Their  multitiules  did  no  way 
disconcert  him.  He  rather  took  a  pride  in  numbering 
them ;  and,  with  Comus,  seemed  pleased  to  be  "  stocked 
with  so  fiiir  a  herd." 

With  such  soiu'ces,  it  was  a  wonder  how  he  contrived 
to  keep  his  tr(;asury  always  empty.  He  did  it  by  force 
of  an  aphorism,  which  he  had  often  in  his  mouth,  that 
"  money  kept  longer  than  three  days  stinks."  So  he 
made  use  of  it  while  it  was  fresh.  A  good  part  he  drank 
away  (for  he  was  an  excellent  toss-pot),  some  he  gave 
away,  the  rest  he  threw  away,  literally  tossing  and  hurling 
it  violently  from  him — as  boys  do  burrs,  or  as  if  it  had 
been  infectious, — into  ponds,  or  ditches,  or  deep  holes, 
inscrutable  cavities  of  the  earth ; — or  he  would  bury  it 
(where  he  would  never  seek  it  again)  by  a  river's  side 
under  some  bank,  which  (he  would  facetiously  observe) 
paid  no  interest — but  out  away  from  him  it  must  go 
peremptorily,  as  Hagar's  offspring  into  the  wilderness, 
while  it  was  sweet.  He  never  missed  it.  The  streams 
were  perennial  which  fed  his  fisc.  When  new  supplies 
became  necessary,  the  first  person  that  had  the  felicity  to 
fall  in  with  him,  friend  or  stranger,  was  sure  to  contri- 
bute to  the  deficiency.  For  Bigod  had  an  tindeniahle 
way  with  him.  He  had  a  cheerful,  open  exterior,  a  quick 
jovial  eye,  a  bald  forehead,  just  touched  with  grey  (cana 
fides).  He  anticipated  no  excuse,  and  found  none.  And, 
waiving  for  a  while  my  theory  as  to  the  great  race,  I 
would  \)\\t  it  to  the  most  untheorising  reader,  who  may 
at  times  have  disposable  coin  in  his  pocket,  whether  it  is 
not  more  repugnant  to  the  kindliness  of  his  nature  to 
refuse  such  a  one  as  I  am  descriliing,  than  to  say  no  to 
a  poor  petitionary  rogue  (your  bastard  borrower),  who,  by 
his  mumping  visnoniy,  tells  you  that  he  expects  nothing 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  ]\IEX.  35 

better ;  ami,  therefore,  whose  preconceived  notions  and 
expectations  you  do  in  reality  so  much  less  shock  in  the 
refusal. 

When  I  think  of  this  man  ;  his  fiery  glow  of  heart ; 
his  swell  of  feeling ;  how  magnificent,  how  ideal  he  was  ; 
how  gi-eat  at  the  midnight  horn- ;  and  when  I  compare 
with  him  the  companions  with  whom  I  have  associated 
since,  I  gi'udge  the  sa^^ng  of  a  few  idle  ducats,  and  think 
that  I  am  fiillcn  into  the  society  of  lenders,  and  little  men. 

To  one  like  Elia,  whose  treasm-es  are  rather  cased  in 
leather  covers  than  closed  in  ii'on  cofters,  there  is  a  class 
of  alienators  more  formidable  than  that  which  I  have 
touched  upon  ;  I  mean  yoiu"  horroivers  of  books — those 
mutilators  of  collections,  spoilers  of  the  symmetiy  of 
shelves,  and  creators  of  odd  volumes.  Thei*e  is  Comber- 
batch,  matchless  in  his  depredations  ! 

That  foul  gap  in  the  bottom  shelf  facing  j'ou,  like  a 
great  eye-tooth  knocked  out — (you  are  now  with  me  in 
my  little  back  study  in  Bloomsliury,  Reader  !) — with  the 
huge  Switzer-like  tomes  on  each  side  (like  the  Guildhall 
giants,  in  their  reformed  posture,  guardant  of  nothing) 
once  held  the  tallest  of  my  folios.  Opera  Bonave)itnrce, 
choice  and  massy  divinity,  to  which  its  two  supporters 
(school  divinity  also,  but  of  a  lesser  calibre, — Bellarmine, 
and  Holy  Thomas),  showed  but  as  dwarfs, — itself  an 
Ascapart ! — that  Comberbatch  abstracted  upon  the  faith 
of  a  theory  he  holds,  which  is  more  easy,  I  confess,  for 
me  to  sufffer  by  than  to  refute,  namely,  that  "  the  title  to 
property  in  a  book  (my  Bonaventure,  for  instance)  is  in 
exact  ratio  to  the  claimant's  powers  of  imderstanding  and 
appreciating  the  same."  Shoidd  he  go  on  acting  upon 
this  theory,  which  of  oiu*  shelves  is  safe  1 

The  slight  vacuum  in  the  left-hand  case — two  shelves 
from  the  ceiling — scarcely  distinguishaWe  but  by  the 
quick  eye  of  a  loser — was  whilom  the  commodious  resting- 
place  of  Browne  on  Urn  Bmial.  C.  will  hardly  allege 
that  he  knows  more  about  that  treatise  than  I  do,  who 
introduced  it  to  him,  and  was  indeed  the  first  (of  the 


36  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

moderns)  to  discover  its  beauties — but  so  have  I  known 
a  foolish  lover  to  praise  his  mistress  in  the  presence  of  a 
rival  more  qualified  to  carry  her  off  than  himself. — Just 
below,  Dodsley's  dramas  want  their  fom'tli  volume,  where 
Vittoria  Oorombona  is  !  The  remainder  nine  are  as  dis- 
tasteful as  Priam's  refuse  sons,  when  the  Fates  borrowed 
Hector.  Here  stood  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  in 
sober  state.— There  loitered  the  Complete  Angler ;  quiet 
as  in  life,  by  some  stream  side.  In  yonder  nook,  John 
Buncle,  a  widower-volume,  with  "  eyes  closed,"  mom-ns 
his  ravished  mate. 

One  justice  I  must  do  my  friend,  that  if  he  sometimes, 
like  the  sea,  sweeps  away  a  treasm-e,  at  another  time, 
sea-like,  he  throws  nj)  as  rich  an  equivalent  to  match  it. 
I  have  a  small  under-coUection  of  this  natm"e  (my  friend's 
gatherings  in  his  various  calls),  picked  up,  he  has  for- 
gotten at  what  odd  places,  and  deposited  with  as  little 
memory  at  mine.  I  take  in  these  orphans,  the  twice- 
deserted.  These  proselytes  of  the  gate  are  welcome  as  the 
true  Hebrews.  There  they  stand  in  conjunction  ;  natives, 
and  naturalised.  The  latter  seem  as  little  disposed  to 
inquire  out  their  true  lineage  as  I  am. — I  charge  no 
warehouse-room  for  these  deodands,  nor  shall  ever  put 
myself  to  the  ungentlemanly  trouble  of  advertising  a  sale 
of  them  to  pay  expenses. 

To  lose  a  volume  to  0.  carries  some  sense  and  meaning 
in  it.  You  are  sm-e  that  he  will  make  one  hearty  meal 
on  yoiu-  viands,  if  he  can  give  no  account  of  the  platter 
after  it.  But  what  moved  thee,  wayward,  spiteful  K., 
to  be  so  importunate  to  carry  off  with  thee,  in  spite  of 
tears  and  adjurations  to  thee  to  forbear,  the  Letters  of 
that  princely  woman,  the  thrice  noble  Margaret  New- 
castle— knowing  at  the  time,  and  knowing  that  I  knew 
also,  thou  most  assuredly  wouldst  never  tm'ii  over  one 
leaf  of  the  illustrious  folio  : — what  but  the  mere  s])irit  of 
contradiction,  and  childish  love  of  getting  the  better  of 
thy  friend  1 — Then,  worst  cut  of  all  !  to  transport  it  with 
thee  to  the  Galilean  land — 


NEW  year's  eve.  37 

Unworthy  luuil  to  liailjour  .such  a  sweetness, 

A  virtue  in  whicli  all  eniioliling  thoughts  dwelt, 

Pure  thoughts,  kind  thoughts,  higli  thoughts,  her  sex's  wonder  ! 

^liadst  thou  not  tliy  play-books,  and  book.s  of  jests  and 


fancies,  about  thee,  to  keep  thee  merry,  even  as  thou 
keepest  all  compauies  with  thy  quips  and  mirthful  tales  1 
Child  of  the  Green-room,  it  was  unkindly  done  of  thee. 
Thy  wife,  too,  that  part -French,  better -part -English- 
woman ! — that  she  could  fix  upon  no  other  treatise  to 
bear  away,  in  kindly  token  of  remembering  us,  than  the 
works  of  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brook — of  which  no  French- 
man, nor  woman  of  France,  Italy,  or  England,  was  ever 
by  natm'e  constituted  to  comprehend  a  tittle  !  Was  there 
not  Zimmerman  on  Solitude  ? 

Reader,  if  haply  thou  art  blessed  with  a  moderate 
collection,  be  shy  of  showing  it ;  or  if  thy  heart  over- 
floweth  to  lend  them,  lend  thy  books ;  but  let  it  be  to 
such  a  one  as  S.  T.  C. — he  will  return  them  (generally 
anticipating  the  time  appointed)  with  usury;  enriched 
with  annotations,  tripling  their  value.  I  have  had  ex- 
perience. Many  are  these  precious  MSS.  of  his — (in 
7iuitier  oftentimes,  and  almost  in  quantity  not  unfrequently, 
vying  with  the  originals)  in  no  very  clerkly  hand — legible 
in  my  Daniel ;  in  old  Bmion ;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne ; 
and  those  abstruser  cogitations  of  the  Greville,  now,  alas  ! 
wandering  in  Pagan  lauds. — -I  counsel  thee,  shut  not  thy 
heart,  nor  thy  library,  against  S.  T.  0. 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE. 

Every  man  liath  two  birth-days :  two  days  at  least,  in 
every  year,  which  set  him  upon  revolving  the  lapse  of 
time,  as  it  affects  his  mortal  dm^ation.  The  one  is  that 
which  in  an  especial  manner  he  termeth  his.  In  the 
gradual   desuetude   of  old    observances,    this   custom  of 


38  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

soleiuiiiziug-  our  {truper  birth-day  hath  nearly  passed  away, 
or  is  left  to  children,  who  reflect  nothing  at  all  about  the 
matter,  nor  understand  anything  in  it  beyond  cake  aud 
orange.  But  the  birth  of  a  New  Year  is  of  an  interest 
too  wide  to  be  pretermitted  by  king  or  cobbler.  No  one 
ever  reganled  the  First  of  January  with  indift'erence.  It 
is  that  from  which  all  date  their  time,  and  count  upon 
what  is  left.     It  is  the  nativity  of  om-  common  Adam. 

Of  all  sound  of  all  bells — (bells,  the  music  nighest 
bordering  iipon  heaven) — most  solemn  and  touching  is 
the  peal  which  rings  out  the  Old  Year.  I  never  hear  it 
without  a  gathering-up  of  my  mind  to  a  concentration  of 
all  the  images  that  have  been  diffused  over  the  past 
twelvemonth ;  all  I  have  done  or  suffered,  performed  or 
neglected,  in  that  regTetted  time.  I  begin  to  know  its 
worth,  as  when  a  person  dies.  It  takes  a  personal  coloiu" ; 
nor  was  it  a  poetical  flight  in  a  contemporary,  when  he 
exclaimed — 

I  saw  the  skirts  of  the  departing  Year. 

It  is  no  more  than  what  in  sober  sadness  every  one  of 
us  seems  to  be  conscious  of,  in  that  awful  leave-taking. 
I  am  siu"e  I  felt  it,  and  all  felt  it  with  me,  last  night ; 
though  some  of  my  comijanions  affected  rather  to  manifest 
an  exhilaration  at  the  birth  of  the  coming  year,  than  any 
very  tender  regrets  for  the  decease  of  its  predecessor. 
But  I  am  none  of  those  who — 

Welcome  the  coining,  speed  the  parting  guest. 

I  am  natiu-ally,  beforehand,  shy  of  novelties ;  new 
books,  new  faces,  new  years, —  from  some  mental  twist 
which  makes  it  difficult  in  me  to  face  the  prospective.  I 
have  almost  ceased  to  hope ;  and  am  sanguine  only  in  the 
prospects  of  other  (former  years).  I  plunge  into  fore- 
gone visions  and  conclusions.  I  encounter  pell-mell  with 
past  disappointments.  I  am  armom- -proof  against  old 
discom-agements.  I  forgive,  or  overcome  in  fancy,  old 
adversaries.     I  play  over  again  for  love,  as  the  gamesters 


NEW  yelyr's  eve.  39 

phrase  it,  games  for  wbich  I  onee  i)aid  so  dear.  1  would 
scarce  now  have  any  of  those  untoward  accidents  and 
events  of  my  life  reversed.  I  would  no  more  alter  them 
than  the  incidents  of  some  well -contrived  novel.  Me- 
thinks,  it  is  better  that  I  should  have  pined  away  seven 
of  my  goldenest  years,  wdien  I  was  thrall  to  the  fair  hah-, 
and  faii-er  eyes,  of  Alice  W — n,  than  that  so  passionate  a 
love  adventine  shoidd  be  lost.  It  was  better  that  om- 
family  shoidd  have  missed  that  legacy,  which  old  Dorrell 
cheated  ns  of,  than  that  I  should  have  at  this  moment 
two  thousand  pounds  in  banco,  and  be  without  the  idea 
of  that  specious  old  rogiie. 

In  a  degree  beneath  manhood,  it  is  my  infirmity  to 
look  back  upon  those  early  days.  Do  I  advance  a 
paradox  when  I  say,  that,  skipping  over  the  intervention 
of  forty  years,  a  man  may  have  leave  to  love  himself 
withoiit  the  imputation  of  self-love  ? 

If  I  know  aught  of  myself,  no  one  whose  mind  is  intro- 
spective— and  mine  is  painfuUy  so — can  have  a  less  re- 
spect for  his  present  itlentity  than  I  have  for  the  man 
Elia.  I  know  him  to  be  light,  and  vain,  and  humom-- 
some ;  a  notorious  *  *  *  ;  addicted  to  *  *  *  ; 
averse  from  counsel,  neither  taking  it,  nor  oifering  it ; — ■ 
*  *  *  besides  ;  a  stammering  buffoon  ;  what  you 
will ;  lay  it  on,  and  spare  not ;  I  subscribe  to  it  all,  and 
much  more,  than  thou  canst  be  wilhng  to  lay  at  his  door 
— but  for  the  child  Elia — that  "  other  me,"  there,  in  the 
background — I  must  take  leave  to  cherish  the  remem- 
brance of  that  young  master — with  as  little  reference,  I 
protest,  to  his  stiipid  changeling  of  five-and-forty,  as  if  it 
had  been  a  child  of  some  other  house,  and  not  of  my 
parents.  I  can  cry  over  its  patient  small-pox  at  five, 
and  rougher  medicaments.  I  can  lay  its  poor  fevered 
head  upon  the  sick  pillow^  at  Christ's,  and  wake  with  it 
in  surprise  at  the  gentle  postiu-e  of  materaal  tenderness 
hanging  over  it,  that  unknown  had  watched  its  sleep.  I 
know  how  it  shrank  from  any  the  least  colom-  of  false- 
hood.— God  help  thee,  Elia,  how  art  thou  changed  ! — 


40  TFIE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Thou  art  .sopliisticatod.  —  I  know  how  lioiu'st,  how 
courageous  (for  a  weakling)  it  was — how  religious,  how 
imaginative,  how  hopeful !  From  what  have  I  not  fallen, 
if  the  child  I  remember  was  indeed  myself,  —  and  not 
some  dissemhling  guardian,  presenting  a  false  identity,  to 
give  the  rule  to  my  unpractised  steps,  and  regulate  the 
tone  of  my  moral  being  ! 

That  I  am  fond  of  indulging,  beyond  a  hope  of 
sympathy,  in  such  reti'ospection,  may  be  the  symptom 
of  some  sickly  idiosyncrasy.  Or  is  it  owing  to  another 
cause :  simply,  tliat  l)oing  without  wife  or  family,  I  have 
not  learned  to  jn-oject  myself  enough  out  of  myself;  and 
having  no  offspring  of  my  own  to  dally  with,  I  turn  back 
upon  memory,  and  adopt  my  own  early  idea,  as  my  heir 
and  favourite  ?  If  these  speculations  seem  fantastical  to 
thee,  Reader  (a  busy  man,  perchance),  if  I  tread  out  of 
the  way  of  thy  sympathy,  and  am  singularly  conceited 
only,  I  retire,  impenetrable  to  ridicule,  under  the  phantom 
cloud  of  Elia. 

The  elders,  witli  whom  I  was  brought  up,  were  of  a 
character  not  likely  to  let  slijj  the  sacred  observance  of 
any  old  institution  ;  and  the  ringing  out  of  tlie  Old  Year 
was  kept  l)y  them  with  circumstances  of  peculiar  ceremony. 
— In  those  days  the  sound  of  those  midnight  chimes, 
though  it  seemed  to  raise  hilarity  in  all  around  me,  never 
failed  to  bring  a  train  of  pensive  imagery  into  my  fancy. 
Yet  I  then  scarce  conceived  what  it  meant,  or  thought 
of  it  as  a  reckoning  that  concerned  me.  Not  childhood 
alone,  but  the  young  man  till  thirty,  never  feels  practically 
that  he  is  mortal.  He  knows  it  indeed,  and,  if  need 
were,  he  could  joreach  a  homily  on  the  fragility  of  life ; 
but  he  brings  it  not  home  to  himself,  any  more  than  in 
a  hot  June  we  can  ai)propriate  to  our  imagination  the 
freezing  days  of  December.  But  now,  shall  I  confess  a 
truth  ? — I  feel  these  audits  l)ut  too  powerfully.  I  begin 
to  count  the  probabilities  of  my  duration,  and  to  grudge 
at  the  expcnditiire  of  moments  and  shortest  periods,  like 
misers'  farthings.     In  proj)ortion  as  the  years  both  lessen 


NEW  year's  eve.  41 

and  sliorten,  I  set  iiioi-c  count  upon  tlioir  pci'iod.s,  and 
would  Mn  lay  my  iucttbrtual  finger  upon  the  spoke  oi  tlic 
great  wheel.  I  ain  not  content  to  i)ass  away  "  like  a 
weaver's  shuttle."  Those  metaphors  solace  me  not,  nor 
sweeten  the  unpalatable  draught  of  mortality.  I  care 
not  to  be  carried  with  the  tide,  that  smoothly  bears 
human  life  to  eternity;  and  reluct  at  the  in(?vitable  course 
of  destiny.  I  am  in  love  with  this  green  earth  ;  the  face 
of  town  and  comitry  ;  the  imspeakable  nu-al  solitudes,  and 
the  sweet  security  of  streets.  I  would  set  up  my 
tabernacle  here.  I  am  content  to  stand  still  at  the  age 
to  which  I  am  arrived  ;  I,  and  my  friends :  to  be  no 
younger,  no  richer,  no  handsomer.  I  do  not  want  to  be 
weaned  by  age ;  or  drop,  like  mellow  fruit,  as  they  say, 
into  the  grave. — Any  alteration,  on  this  earth  of  mine,  in 
diet  or  in  lodging,  puzzles  and  discomposes  me.  My 
household-gods  plant  a  terrible  fixed  foot,  and  are  not 
rooted  up  without  blood  They  do  not  willingly  seek 
Lavinian  shores.     A  new  state  of  being  stag-gers  me. 

Sun,  and  sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks,  and 
summer  holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields,  and  the 
delicious  juices  of  meats  and  fishes,  and  society,  and  the 
cheerful  glass,  and  candle-light,  and  fireside  conversations, 
and  innocent  vanities,  and  jests,  and  iron^/  itself — do 
these  things  go  out  with  life  1 

Can  a  ghost  laugh,  or  shake  his  gaunt  sides,  when  you 
are  pleasant  with  him  1 

And  you,  my  midnight  darlings,  my  Folios  ;  must  I 
part  with  the  intense  delight  of  having  you  (huge  arm- 
fuls)  in  my  embraces  ?  Must  knowledge  come  to  me,  if 
it  come  at  all,  by  some  awkward  experiment  of  intuition, 
and  no  longer  by  this  familiar  process  of  reading  ? 

Shall  I  enjoy  friendships  there,  wanting  the  smiling 
indications  which  pouit  me  to  them  here, — the  recog- 
nisable foce — the  "sweet  assiu-ance  of  a  look"  1 

In  winter  this  intolerable  disinclination  to  dying — to 
give  it  its  mildest  name — does  more  esi)ecially  haunt  and 
beset  me.     In  a  genial  August  noon,  beneath  a  swelter- 


42  TJIE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

iiig  sky,  death  ia  almost  problematic.  At  those  times  do 
such  230or  snakes  as  myself  enjoy  an  immortality.  Then 
we  expand  and  bm-geon.  Then  we  are  as  strong  again, 
as  valiant  again,  as  wise  again,  and  a  great  deal  taller. 
The  blast  that  nips  and  shrinks  me,  jjuts  me  in  thoughts 
of  death.  All  things  allied  to  the  insubstantial,  wait 
upon  that  master  feeling ;  cold,  numbness,  dreams,  per- 
plexity ;  moonlight  itself,  with  its  shadowy  and  spectral 
appearances, — that  cold  ghost  of  the  sun,  or  Phoebus' 
sickly  sister,  like  that  innutritions  one  denounced  in  the 
Canticles  : — I  am  none  of  her  minions — I  hold  witli  the 
Persian. 

Whatsoever  thwarts,  or  puts  me  out  of  my  way,  brings 
death  unto  my  mind.  All  i^artial  evils,  like  humom's, 
run  into  that  capital  plague-sore. — I  have  heard  some 
profess  an  indifference  to  life.  Such  hail  the  end  of  their 
existence  as  a  port  of  refuge ;  and  speak  of  the  grave 
as  of  some  soft  arms,  in  which  they  may  slumber  as  on 

a  jnllow.     Some  have  wooed   death but   out   upon 

thee,  I  say,  thoii  fotd,  ugly  phantom  !  I  detest,  abhor, 
execrate,  and  (with  Friar  John)  give  thee  to  six  score 
thousand  devils,  as  in  no  instance  to  be  excused  or 
tolerated,  but  shtmned  as  an  universal  viper;  to  be 
branded,  proscribed,  and  spoken  evil  of!  In  no  way 
can  I  be  brought  to  digest  tliee,  thou  thin,  melancholy 
Privatio7i,  or  more  frightful  and  confounding  Positive ! 

Those  antidotes,  prescribed  against  the  fear  of  thee, 
are  altogether  frigid  and  insulting,  like  thyself  For 
what  satisfaction  hath  a  man,  that  he  shall  "  lie  down 
with  kings  and  emperors  in  death,"  who  in  his  lifetime 
never  gi'eatly  coveted  the  society  of  such  bed-felloAvs  1 — 
or,  forsooth,  that  "so  shall  the  fairest  face  appear"  l — - 
why,  to  comfort  me,  must  Alice  W — n  be  a  goblin  ? 
More  than  all,  I  conceive  disgust  at  those  impertinent  and 
misbecoming  familiarities,  inscribed  upon  your  ordinary 
tombstones.  Every  dead  man  must  take  upon  himself 
to  be  lecturing  me  with  his  odious  truism,  that  "  Such  as 
he  now  is  I  must  shortly  be."     Not  so  shortly,  friend, 


NEW  year's  eve.  43 

perhaps,  as  thou  iniagiuest.  In  the  mcautiiiu!  I  am 
alive.  I  move  about.  I  am  worth  twenty  of  thee. 
Know  thy  betters  !  Thy  New  Years'  days  are  past.  I 
survive,  a  jolly  candidate  for  1821.  Another  cup  of 
wine — and  while  that  tm-ncoat  bell,  that  just  now  moimi- 
fully  chanted  the  obsequies  of  1820  departed,  with 
changed  notes  lustily  rings  in  a  successor,  let  us  attune 
to  its  peal  the  song  made  on  a  like  occasion,  by  hearty, 
cheerful  Sir.  Cotton. 

THE  NEW  YEAK. 

Hauk,  the  cock  crows,  and  yon  l>riglit  star 

Tells  us,  the  day  himself 's  not  far  ; 

And  see  where,  breaking  from  the  night, 

He  gilds  the  western  hills  with  light. 

With  him  old  Jamis  doth  appear, 

Peeping  into  the  future  year, 

With  such  a  look  as  seems  to  say 

The  prospect  is  not  good  that  way. 

Thus  do  we  rise  ill  sights  to  see, 

And  'gainst  ourselves  to  prophesy  ; 

When  the  prophetic  fear  of  things 

A  more  tormenting  mischief  brings. 

More  full  of  soul-tormenting  gall 

Thau  direst  mischiefs  can  befall. 

But  stay  !  but  stay  !  methinks  my  sight, 

Better  informed  by  clearer  light, 

Discerns  sereueness  in  that  brow 

That  all  contracted  seemed  but  now. 

His  revers'd  face  may  show  distaste, 

And  frown  upon  the  ills  are  past ; 

But  that  which  this  way  looks  is  clear. 

And  smiles  upon  the  New-born  Year. 

He  looks  too  from  a  place  so  high, 

The  year  lies  open  to  his  eye  ; 

And  all  the  moments  open  are 

To  the  exact  discoverer. 

Yet  more  and  more  he  smiles  upon 

The  happy  revolution. 

Why  should  we  then  suspect  or  fear 

The  influences  of  a  year. 

So  smiles  upon  us  the  first  morn. 

And  speaks  us  good  so  soon  as  born  ? 

Plague  on't !  the  last  was  ill  enough. 


44  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

This  cannot  but  make  bcLtcr  pioof ; 

Or,  at  the  worst,  as  we  Ijnish'd  through 

The  last,  why  so  we  may  this  too  ; 

And  then  the  next  in  reason  shou'd 

Be  superexcellently  good  : 

For  the  worst  ills  (we  daily  see) 

Have  no  more  perpetuity 

Thau  the  best  fortunes  that  do  fall  ; 

Wliioh  also  bring  us  wherewithal 

Longer  their  being  to  support, 

Than  those  do  of  the  other  sort  : 

And  who  has  one  good  year  iu  three, 

And  yet  repines  at  destiny, 

Appears  ungrateful  in  the  case, 

And  merits  not  the  good  he  has. 

Then  let  us  welcome  the  New  Guest 

With  lusty  brimmers  of  the  best : 

Mirth  always  should  C4ood  Fortune  meet, 

And  renders  e'en  Disaster  sweet  : 

And  thougli  the  Princess  turn  her  back. 

Let  us  but  line  ourselves  with  sack, 

We  better  shall  by  far  hold  out, 

Till  the  next  year  she  face  about. 

How  say  you,  Reader — do  not  these  verses  smack  of 
the  rough  magnanimity  of  the  old  English  vein  1  Do 
they  not  fortify  like  a  cordial ;  enlarging  the  heart,  and 
jjroductive  of  sweet  blood,  and  generous  s})irits,  in  the 
concoction  1  Where  be  those  puling  fears  of  death,  just 
now  expressed  or  affected  ? — Passed  like  a  cloud — ab- 
sorbed in  the  purging  sunlight  of  clear  poetry — clean 
washed  away  by  a  wave  of  genuine  Helicon,  your  only 
Spa  for  these  hypochondries.  And  now  another  cii])  of 
the  generous !  and  a  merry  New  Year,  and  many  of 
them  to  you  all,  my  masters  ! 


MRS.  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST. 

"A  CLEAR  fu-e,  a  clean  hearth, ^  and  the  rigour  of  the 

game."    This  was  the  celelirated  ivis/i  of  old  Sarah  Battle 

['  This  was  before  the  introduction  of  rugs,  Reader.     You  must 


MRS.   battle's  opinions  ON  WHIST.  45 

(uow  with  God),  who,  next  to  her  devotions,  loved  a  tjood 
game  of  whist.  She  was  none  of  yoiu'  hikewann  game- 
sters, yom-  half-and-half  players,  who  have  no  objection 
to  take  a  hand,  if  you  want  one  to  make  up  a  rubber ; 
who  affirm  that  they  have  no  pleasure  in  winning ;  that 
they  like  to  win  one  game  and  lose  another ;  that  they 
can  while  away  an  hour  very  agi-eeably  at  a  card-table, 
but  are  indifferent  whether  they  play  or  no ;  and  will 
desire  an  adversary,  who  has  slipped  a  wrong  card,  to 
take  it  up  and  play  another.^  These  insufferable  triflers 
are  the  cm'se  of  a  table.  One  of  these  flies  will  spoil  a 
whole  pot.  Of  such  it  may  be  said  that  they  do  not  play 
at  cards,  but  only  play  at  playing  at  them. 

Sarah  Battle  was  none  of  that  breed.  She  detested 
them,  as  I  do,  from  her  heart  and  soul,  and  would  not, 
save  upon  a  striking  emergency,  willingly  seat  herself  at 
the  same  table  with  them.  She  loved  a  thorough -paced 
partner,  a  determined  enemy.  She  took,  and  gave,  no 
concessions.  She  hated  ftxvom'S.  She  never  made  a 
revoke,  nor  ever  passed  it  over  in  her  adversary  without 
exacting  the  utmost  forfeiture.  She  fought  a  good  fight : 
cut  and  thrust.  She  held  not  her  good  sword  (her  cards) 
"like  a  dancer."  She  sate  bolt  upright;  and  neither 
showed  you  her  cards,  nor  desired  to  see  yom-s.  All 
people  have  their  blind  side — their  superstitions ;  and  I 
have  heard  her  declare,  under  the  rose,  that  Hearts  was 
her  favourite  suit. 

I  never  in  my  life — and  I  knew  Sarah  Battle  many  of 
the  best  years  of  it — saw  her  take  out  her  snuff-box  when 
it  was  her  tm'u  to  yAay ;  or  snuff  a  candle  in  the  middle 
of  a  game ;  or  ring  for  a  servant,  till  it  was  fairly  over. 
She  never  introduced,  or  connived  at,  miscellaneous  con- 
versation during  its  process.  As  she  emphatically  ob- 
served, cards  were  cards ;  and  if  I  ever  saw  unmingled 

remember  the  intolerable  crash  of  the  imswept  cinders  betwixt  yonr 
foot  and  the  marble.] 

P  As  if  a  sportsman  should  tell  yon  he  liked  to  kill  a  fox  one 
day  and  lose  him  the  next.  ] 


4G  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

distaste  in  her  fine  last-century  countenance,  it  was  at  the 
airs  of  a  young  gentleman  of  a  literary  tiu^n,  who  had 
been  with  difficulty  persuaded  to  take  a  hand ;  and  who, 
in  his  excess  of  candour,  declared,  that  he  thought  there 
was  no  harm  in  unbending  the  mind  now  and  then,  after 
serious  studies,  in  recreations  of  that  kind  !  She  could 
not  bear  to  have  her  noble  occupation,  to  Avhich  she 
wound  up  her  faculties,  considered  in  that  light.  It  was 
her  business,  her  duty,  the  thing  she  came  into  the  world 
to  do, — and  she  did  it.  She  unbent  her  mind  afterwards 
— over  a  book. 

Pojie  was  her  flivourite  author :  his  Rape  of  the  Lock 
her  favourite  work.  She  once  did  me  the  favour  to  play 
over  with  me  (with  the  cards)  his  celebrated  game  of 
Ombre  in  that  poem ;  and  to  explain  to  me  how  far  it 
agreed  with,  and  in  what  points  it  would  be  found  to 
differ  from,  trackille.  Her  illustrations  were  apposite 
and  poignant ;  and  I  had  the  pleasm-e  of  sending  the 
substance  of  them  to  Mr.  Bowles ;  but  I  suppose  they 
came  too  late  to  be  inserted  among  his  ingenious  notes 
upon  that  author. 

Quadrille,  she  has  often  told  me,  was  her  first  love ; 
but  whist  had  engaged  her  matm-er  esteem.  The  former, 
she  said,  was  showy  and  specious,  and  likely  to  alhue 
young  persons.  The  vmcertainty  and  quick  sliifting  of 
l^artners — a  thing  which  the  constancy  of  whist  abhors  ; 
the  dazzling  supremacy  and  regal  investiture  of  Spadille 
— absm'd,  as  she  justly  observed,  in  the  pure  aristocracy 
of  whist,  where  his  crown  and  garter  give  him  no  proper 
power  above  his  brother-nobility  of  the  Aces  ; — the  giddy 
vanity,  so  taking  to  the  inexperienced,  of  playing  alone ; 
above  all,  the  overpowering  attractions  of  a  Sans  Prendre 
Vole, — to  the  triumph  of  which  there  is  certainly  nothing 
parallel  or  approaching,  in  the  contingencies  of  whist ; — 
all  these,  she  would  say,  make  qiiadrille  a  game  of  capti- 
vation  to  the  young  and  enthusiastic.  But  whist  was 
the  solider  game  :  that  was  her  word.  It  was  a  long 
meal ;    not  like  quadrille,  a  feast  of  snatches.     One  or 


MRS.   battle's  opinions  ON  WIITST.  47 

two  rubbers  might  co-cxtcud  in  diu-atioii  with  an  evening. 
They  gave  time  to  form  rooted  friendsliips,  to  cultivate 
steady  enmities.  She  despised  the  chance-started,  capri- 
cious, and  ever-fluctuating  alliances  of  the  other.  The 
skirmishes  of  quadrille,  she  would  say,  remintled  her  of 
the  petty  ephemeral  embroilments  of  the  little  Italian 
states,  depicted  by  Machiavel :  perpetually  changing 
postiu-es  and  connexions;  bitter  foes  to-day,  sugared 
darlings  to-morrow  ;  kissing  and  scratching  in  a  breath  ; 
—  but  the  wars  of  whist  were  comparable  to  the  long, 
steady,  deep-rooted,  rational  antipathies  of  the  great 
French  and  English  nations. 

A  grave  simplicity  was  what  she  chiefly  admired  in 
her  fovoiuite  game.  There  Avas  nothing  silly  in  it,  like 
the  nob  in  cribbage — nothing  superfluous.  No  Jiiislies — 
that  most  irrational  of  all  pleas  that  a  reasonable  being 
can  set  up : — that  any  one  should  claim  four  by  virtue  of 
holding  cards  of  the  same  mark  and  colom-,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  playing  of  the  game,  or  the  individual  worth 
or  pretensions  of  the  cards  themselves  !  She  held  this 
to  be  a  solecism  ;  as  pitiful  an  ambition  at  cards  as 
alliteration  is  in  authorship.  She  despised  superficiality, 
and  looked  deeper  than  the  colom-s  of  things. — Suits 
were  soldiers,  she  would  say,  and  must  have  a  uniformity 
of  array  to  distinguish  them  :  but  what  should  we  say  to 
a  foolish  squii-e,  who  should  claim  a  merit  from  dressing 
up  his  tenantry  in  red  jackets,  that  never  were  to  be 
marshalled — never  to  take  the  field  1 — She  even  wished 
that  whist  were  more  simple  than  it  is  ;  and,  in  my  mind, 
would  have  stripped  it  of  some  appendages,  which,  in  the 
state  of  human  frailty,  may  be  veniaUy,  and  even  com- 
mendably,  allowed  of.  She  saw  no  reason  for  the  decid- 
ing of  the  trump  by  the  timi  of  the  card.  Why  not  one 
suit  always  tnunps  ? — Why  two  colours,  when  the  mark 
of  the  suit  would  have  sufliciently  distinguished  them 
withoiit  it  1 

"  But  the  eye,  my  dear  madam,  is  agreeably  refreshed 
with  tlie  varietv.     Man  is  not  a  creature  of  pure  reason — 


48  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

lie  must  have  liis  senses  delightfully  appealed  to.  We 
see  it  in  R(iman  Catholic  countries,  where  the  music  and 
the  paintings  draw  in  many  to  worship,  whom  yom-  quuker 
spirit  of  unsensualising  would  have  kept  out. — You  your- 
self have  a  pretty  collection  of  paintings — but  confess  to 
me,  whether,  walking  in  yom*  gallery  at  Sandham,  among 
those  clear  Vandykes,  or  among  the  Paul  Potters  in  the 
ante-room,  you  ever  felt  your  bosom  glow  with  an  elegant 
delight,  at  all  comparable  to  that  you  have  it  in  yom- 
power  to  experience  most  evenings  over  a  well-arranged 
assortment  of  the  com't-cards  1 — the  pretty  antic  habits, 
like  heralds  in  a  procession — the  gay  triumiih-assming 
scarlets — the  contrasting  deadly-killing  sables — the  '  hoary 
majesty  of  sjiades' — Pam  in  all  his  glory  ! — 

"All  these  might  be  dispensed  with  ;  and  with  their 
naked  names  upon  the  drab  pasteboard,  the  game  might 
go  on  very  well,  pictureless ;  but  the  heatity  of  cards 
woidd  be  estiugaushed  for  ever.  Stripped  of  all  that  is 
imaginative  in  them,  they  must  degenerate  into  mere 
gambling.  Imagine  a  didl  deal  board,  or  drum  head,  to 
spread  them  on,  instead  of  that  nice  verdant  carpet  (next 
to  nature's),  fittest  arena  for  those  covu-tly  combatants  to 
play  their  gallant  jousts  and  tvu-neys  in  ! — Exchange  those 
delicately-tm-ned  ivory  markers — (work  of  Chinese  artist, 
unconscious  of  their  symbol, — or  as  profanely  slighting 
their  true  application  as  the  arrantest  Ephesian  jom-ney- 
man  that  turned  out  those  little  shrines  for  the  goddess) 
— -exchange  them  for  little  bits  of  leather  (our  ancestors' 
money),  or  chalk  and  a  slate  !" — 

The  old  lady,  with  a  smile,  confessed  the  soundness  of 
my  logic  ;  and  to  her  approl)ation  of  my  argmnents  on  her 
favourite  topic  that  evening  I  have  always  fancied  myself 
indebted  for  the  legacy  of  a  curious  cribbage-boar<l,  made 
of  the  finest  Sienna  marble,  which  her  maternal  uncle 
(old  Wnlter  Plumcr,  whom  I  have  elsewhere  celebrated) 
brought  with  him  from  Florence  : — this,  and  a  trifle  of 
five  hundred  pounds,  came  to  me  at  her  death. 

The  former  becpuist  (whi(th   I  do  not  least  value)  I 


MRS.   battle's  opinions  ON  WHIST.  49 

have  kept  with  religions  care ;  tliough  she  herself,  to  con- 
fess a  truth,  was  never  greatly  taken  with  cribbage.  It 
was  an  essentially  \-iilgar  game,  I  have  heard  her  say, — 
disjiuting  with  her  imcle,  who  was  very  partial  to  it.  She 
could  never  heartily  bring  her  mouth  to  pronoimce  "  Go" 
or  "  Thais  a  go."  She  called  it  an  ungi-ammatical  game. 
The  pegging  teased  her.  I  once  knew  her  to  forfeit  a 
rubber  (a  five-dollar  stake)  because  she  woidd  not  take 
advantage  of  the  tiu"n-up  knave,  which  would  have  given 
it  her,  but  which  she  must  have  claimed  by  the  disgrace- 
ful temne  of  declaring  "  two  for  his  heels."  There  is 
something  extremely  genteel  in  this  sort  of  self-denial. 
Sarah  Battle  was  a  gentlewoman  born. 

Piquet  she  held  the  best  game  at  the  cards  for  two 
persons,  though  she  would  ridicule  the  pedantry  of  the 
terms — such  as  pique — repique — the  capot — theysavom-ed 
(she  thought)  of  affectation.  But  games  for  two,  or  even 
tlii-ee,  she  never  greatly  cared  for.  She  loved  the  quad- 
rate, or  square.  She  would  argue  thus  : — Cards  are  war- 
fare :  the  ends  are  gain,  with  glory.  But  cards  are  war, 
in  disguise  of  a  sport :  when  single  adversaries  encounter, 
the  ends  proposed  are  too  palpable.  By  themselves,  it  is 
too  close  a  fight ;  with  spectators,  it  is  not  much  bettered. 
No  looker-on  can  be  interested,  except  for  a  bet,  and  then 
it  is  a  mere  affair  of  money ;  he  cares  not  for  your  luck 
synipatheticaUt/,  or  for  your  play. — Three  are  still  worse ; 
a  mere  naked  war  of  every  man  against  every  man,  as  in 
cribbage,  without  league  or  alliance ;  or  a  rotation  of 
petty  and  contradictory  interests,  a  succession  of  heartless 
leagues,  and  not  much  more  hearty  infractions  of  them,  as 
in  tradrille. — But  in  square  games  (she  meant  whist),  all 
that  is  possible  to  be  attained  in  card-plajdng  is  accom- 
plished. There  are  the  incentives  of  profit  with  honour, 
common  to  every  species — -though  the  latter  can  be  but 
very  imperfectly  enjoyed  in  those  other  games,  where  the 
spectator  is  only  feebly  a  participator.  But  the  parties  in 
whist  are  spectators  and  principals  too.  They  are  a  theatre 
to  themselves,  and  a  looker-on  is  not  wanted.  He  is  rather 
E 


50  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

worse  than  nothing,  and  an  impcrtiiicnce.  Whist  abhors 
nentrality,  or  interests  beyond  its  sphere.  You  glory  in 
some  siu-prising  stroke  of  skill  or  fortune,  not  beeause  a 
cold — or  even  an  interested — bystander  witnesses  it,  but 
because  yoiu*  partner  sympathises  in  the  contingency. 
You  win  for  two.  You  triumph  for  two.  Two  are  ex- 
alted. Two  again  are  mortified ;  which  divides  their 
disgrace,  as  the  conjunction  doubles  (by  taking  oft'  tlit; 
iuvidiousness)  your  glories.  Two  losing  to  two  are  better 
reconciled,  than  one  to  one  in  that  close  but(;hery.  The 
hostile  feeling  is  weakened  by  multiplying  the  channels. 
War  becomes  a  civil  game.  By  such  reasonings  as  these 
the  old  lady  was  accustomed  to  defend  her  favourite 
pastime. 

No  inducement  could  ever  prevail  upon  her  to  play  at 
any  game,  where  chance  entered  into  the  composition, /or 
nothing.  Chance,  she  would  argue — and  here  again, 
admu'e  the  subtlety  of  her  conclusion  ; — chance  is  nothing, 
but  where  something  else  depends  upon  it.  It  is  obvious 
that  cannot  be  glory.  What  rational  cause  of  exidtation 
could  it  give  to  a  man  to  turn  up  size  ace  a  hundred  times 
together  by  himself?  or  before  spectators,  where  no  stake 
was  depending? — Make  a  lottery  of  a  hundretl  thousand 
tickets  Avith  but  one  fortunate  number — and  what  possible 
principle  of  our  nature,  except  stupid  wonderment,  coidd 
it  gi'atify  to  gain  that  munber  as  many  times  successively 
without  a  prize  1  Therefore  she  disliked  the  mixtm'c  of 
chance  in  backgammon,  where  it  was  not  played  for  money. 
She  called  it  foolish,  and  those  people  idiots,  who  were 
taken  with  a  lucky  hit  under  such  circumstances.  Games 
of  pm'e  skill  were  as  little  to  her  ftmcy.  Played  for  a 
stake,  they  were  a  mere  system  of  over-reaching.  Played 
for  glory,  they  were  a  mere  setting  of  one  man's  wit, — his 
memory,  or  combination-faculty  rather — against  another's  ; 
like  a  mock-engagement  at  a  review,  bloodless  and  profit- 
less. She  could  not  conceive  a  game  wanting  the  spritely 
infusion  of  chance,  the  handsome  excuses  of  good  fortune. 
Two  people  playing  at  chess  in  a  corner  of  a  room,  whilst 


MRS.   battle's  opinions  ON  WIITST.  51 

whist  was  stirriug  in  the  centre,  would  hispiic  h(!r  with 
insufferable  horror  and  ennui.  Those  well-cut  similitudes 
of  Castles  and  Knights,  the  wiagery  of  the  board,  she 
would  argue  (and  I  think  in  this  case  justly),  were  en- 
tirely misplaced  and  senseless.  Those  hard-head  contests 
can  in  no  instance  ally  with  the  fancy.  They  reject  form 
and  colour.  A  pencil  and  dry  slate  (she  used  to  say)  were 
the  proper  arena  for  such  combatants. 

To  those  pimy  objectors  against  cards,  as  nmim-ing  the 
bad  passions,  she  woidd  retort,  that  man  is  a  gaming 
animal.  He  uuist  be  always  trying  to  get  the  better  in 
something  or  other :— that  this  passion  can  scarcely  be 
more  safely  expended  than  upon  a  game  at  cards :  that 
cards  are  a  temporaiy  illusion  ;  in  truth,  a  mere  drama  ■ 
for  we  do  but  j^ldy  at  being  mightily  concerned,  where  a 
few  idle  shillings  are  at  stake,  yet,  dming  the  illusion,  we 
are  as  mightily  concerned  as  those  whose  stake  is  crowns 
and  kingdoms.  They  are  a  sort  of  dream-fighting ;  much 
ado  ;  great  battling,  and  little  bloodshed  ;  mighty  means 
for  disproportioned  ends  :  quite  as  diverting,  and  a  great 
deal  more  innoxious,  than  many  of  those  more  serious 
games  of  life,  which  men  play  mthout  esteeming  them  to 
be  such. 

With  great  deference  to  the  old  lady's  judgment  in 
these  matters,  I  think  I  have  experienced  some  moments 
in  my  life  when  playing  at  cards  for  nothing  has  even 
been  agi-eeable.  When  I  am  in  sickness,  or  not  in  the 
best  spiiits,  I  sometimes  call  for  the  cards,  and  play  a  game 
at  piquet  for  love  with  my  cousin  Bridget — Bridget  Elia. 

I  grant  there  is  something  sneaking  in  it ;  but  with  a 
tooth-ache,  or  a  sprained  ankle, — when  you  are  subdued 
and  hiunble, — you  are  glad  to  put  up  with  an  inferior 
spring  of  action. 

There  is  such  a  thing  in  uatm-e,  I  am  convinced,  as 
side  U'hist. 

I  gi-ant  it  is  not  the  highest  style  of  man — I  deprecate 
the  manes  of  Sarah  Battle — she  lives  not,  alas  !  to  whom 
I  should  apologise. 


52  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

At  such  times,  those  terms  which  my  old  friend  objected 
to,  come  in  as  something  admissible  —  I  love  to  get  a 
tierce  or  a  quatorze,  though  they  mean  nothing.  I  am 
subdued  to  an  inferior  interest.  Those  shadows  of  winning 
amuse  me. 

That  last  game  I  had  with  my  sweet  cousin  (I  cajDotted 
her) — (dare  I  tell  thee,  how  foolish  I  am  1) — I  Avished  it 
migJit  have  lasted  for  ever,  though  we  gained  nothing, 
and  lost  nothing,  though  it  was  a  mere  shade  of  j^lay :  I 
would  be  content  to  go  on  in  that  idle  folly  for  ever. 
The  pijikin  should  be  ever  boiling,  that  was  to  ijrepare 
the  gentle  lenitive  to  my  foot,  which  Bridget  was  doomed 
to  apply  after  the  game  was  over  :  and,  as  I  do  not  much 
relish  appliances,  there  it  should  ever  bubble  Bridget 
and  I  should  be  ever  playing. 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS. 

I  HAVE  no  ear. — 

Mistake  me  not,  reader — nor  imagine  that  I  am  by 
natiu'c  destitute  of  those  exterior  twin  ajipeudages,  hang- 
ing ornaments,  and  (architecturally  speaking)  handsome 
volutes  to  the  human  capital.  Better  my  mother  had 
never  borne  me. — ^I  am,  I  think,  rather  delicately  than 
copiously  provided  with  those  conduits ;  and  I  feel  no 
disposition  to  envy  the  mule  for  his  plenty,  or  the  mole 
for  her  exactness,  in  those  ingenious  labyrinthine  inlets — 
those  indispensable  side-intelligencers. 

Neither  have  I  inciu-red,  or  done  anything  to  incur,  with 
Defoe,  that  hideous  disfigiu-ement,  which  constraiuetl  him 
to  draw  upon  assm-ance — to  feel  "quite  unabashed,"^  and 
at  ease  upon  that  article.  I  was  never,  I  thank  my  stars, 
in  the  pillory  ;  nor,  if  I  read  them  aright,  is  it  within  the 
comj)ass  of  my  destiny,  that  I  ever  shoidd  be. 

When  therefore  I  say  that  I  have  no  ear,  you  will 

^  ["Earless  on  liigli  stood,  unabaslietl,  Defoe." — Dtmciad.] 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  53 

understand  me  to  mean — for  music.  To  say  that  this 
heart  never  melted  at  the  concord  of  sweet  somids,  wonld 
be  a  foul  self-libel.  "  Water  jxirted  frorn  the  sea"  never 
foils  to  move  it  strangely.  So  does  "In  infancy."  But 
they  were  used  to  be  simg  at  her  hari^sichord  (the  old- 
foshioned  instrument  in  vogue  in  those  days)  by  a  gentle- 
woman— ^the  gentlest,  sure,  that  ever  merited  the  appel- 
lation— the   sweetest — why  should  I  hesitate   to   name 

Mrs.  S ,  once  the  blooming  Fanny  Weathcral  of  the 

Temple — who  had  power  to  thrill  the  soul  of  Elia,  small 
imp  as  he  was,  even  in  his  long  coats ;  and  to  make  liim 
glow,  tremble,  and  blush  with  a  passion,  that  not  faintly 
indicated  the  day-spring  of  that  absorbing  sentiment 
which  was  afterwards  destined  to  overwhelm  and  subdue 
his  nature  quite  for  Alice  W n. 

I  even  think  that  sentimentaUy  I  am  disposed  to  har- 
mony. But  organically  I  am  incapable  of  a  time.  I 
liave  been  practising  "  God  save  the  King "  all  my  life ; 
AvhLstling  and  humming  of  it  over  to  myself  in  sohtary 
corners ;  and  am  not  yet  arrived,  they  tell  me,  within 
many  quavers  of  it.  Yet  hath  the  loyalty  of  Elia  never 
been  impeached. 

I  am  not  without  suspicion,  that  I  have  an  undeveloped 
faculty  of  music  within  me.  For  thrumming,  in  my  wild 
way,  on  my  friend  A.'s  piano,  the  other  morning,  while  he 
was  engaged  in  an  adjoining  parloiu", — on  his  retm-n  he 
was  pleased  to  say,  "he  thought  it  could  not  he  the  viaid!" 
On  his  fii'st  surprise  at  hearing  the  keys  touched  in  some- 
what an  airy  and  masterful  way,  not  dreaming  of  me,  his 
suspicions  had  lighted  on  Jenny.  But  a  grace,  snatched 
from  a  superior  refinement,  soon  convinced  him  that  some 
being — technically  perhaps  deficient,  but  higher  informed 
from  a  principle  common  to  all  the  fine  arts — had  swayed 
the  keys  to  a  mood  which  Jenny,  with  all  her  (less  culti- 
vated) enthusiasm,  could  never  have  elicited  fi-om  them. 
I  mention  tliis  as  a  proof  of  my  friend's  penetration,  and 
not  with  any  view  of  disparaging  Jenny. 

Scientifically  I  could  never  be  made  to  understand  (yet 


54  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

have  I  taken  some  pains)  what  a  note  in  music  is  ;  or  how 
one  note  should  (lifter  from  another.  Much  less  in  voices 
can  I  distinguish  a  soprano  from  a  tenor.  Only  sometimes 
the  thorough-bass  I  contrive  to  guess  at,  from  its  being 
supereminently  harsh  and  disagreeable.  I  tremble,  how- 
ever, for  my  misapplication  of  the  simplest  terms  of  that 
which  I  disclaim.  While  I  profess  my  ignorance,  I  scarce 
know  what  to  say  I  am  ignorant  of.  I  hate,  perhaps,  by 
misnomers.  Sostemito  and  adagio  stand  in  the  like 
relation  of  obscurity  to  me ;  and  Sol,  Fa,  Mi,  Re,  is  as 
conjm'ing  as  Baralijyton. 

It  is  hard  to  stand  alone  in  an  age  like  this, — (consti- 
tuted to  the  quick  and  critical  perception  of  all  harmonious 
combinations,  I  verily  lielieve,  beyond  all  preceding  ages, 
since  Jubal  stumbled  upon  the  gamut,)  to  remain,  as  it 
were,  singly  unimpressible  to  the  magic  influences  of  an 
art,  which  is  said  to  have  such  an  especial  stroke  at 
soothing,  elevating,  and  refining  the  passions. — Yet, 
rather  than  break  the  candid  current  of  my  confessions,  I 
must  avow  to  you  that  I  have  received  a  great  deal  more 
pain  than  pleasure  from  this  so  cried-up  foculty. 

I  am  constitutionally  susceptible  of  noises.  A  carpen- 
ter's hammer,  in  a  warm  simimer  noon,  will  fret  me  into 
more  than  midsummer  madness.  But  those  unconnected, 
unset  sounds,  are  nothing  to  the  measured  malice  of  music. 
The  ear  is  passive  to  those  single  strokes ;  willingly  endur- 
ing stripes  while  it  hath  no  task  to  con.  To  music  it  can- 
not be  passive.  It  will  strive — mine  at  least  will — 
spite  of  its  inaptitude,  to  thrid  the  maze ;  like  an  un- 
skilled eye  painfully  poring  upon  hieroglj^^hics.  I  have 
sat  through  an  Italian  Opera,  till,  for  sheer  pain,  and 
inexplicable  anguish,  I  have  rushed  out  into  the  noisiest 
places  of  the  crowded  streets,  to  solace  myself  with 
sounds,  which  I  was  not  obliged  to  follow,  and  get  rid  of 
the  distracting  torment  of  endless,  fruitless,  barren  atten- 
tion !  I  take  refuge  in  the  unpretending  assemblage  of 
lionest  common-life  sounds ; — and  the  purgatory  of  the 
Enraged  Musician  becomes  my  paradise. 


A  CHAPTER  ON   EARS.  55 

I  have  sat  at  an  Oratorio  (that  profanation  of  the  pur- 
poses of  the  cheerful  pUiyhouse)  watching  the  faces  of  the 
auditory  in  the  pit  (what  a  contrast  to  Hogarth's  Laughing 
Audience  !)  immoveable,  or  affecting  some  iaiut  emotion — 
till  (as  some  have  said,  that  om*  occujjations  in  the  next 
world  will  be  but  a  shadow  of  what  delighted  us  in  this) 
I  have  imagined  myself  in  some  cold  Theatre  in  Hades, 
where  some  of  the  foi-ms  of  the  earthly  one  should  be 
.kept  up,  \\ith  none  of  the  enjoyment ;  or  hke  that 

Party  in  a  parlour 

All  silent,  and  all  damned. 

Above  all,  those  insuiferable  concertos,  and  pieces  of 
mixsic,  as  they  are  called,  do  plague  and  embitter  my 
apprehension. — Words  are  something ;  but  to  be  exposed 
to  an  endless  battery  of  mere  sounds;  to  be  long  a  dying; 
to  lie  stretched  upon  a  rack  of  roses ;  to  keep  uji  languor 
by  unintermitted  cffoi-t ;  to  pile  honey  upon  sugar,  and 
sugar  upon  honey,  to  an  interminable  tedious  sweetness ; 
to  fill  up  sound  vAih  feeling,  and  strain  ideas  to  keep  pace 
with  it ;  to  gaze  on  empty  frames,  and  be  forced  to  make 
the  pictures  for  yoiu'self ;  to  read  a  book,  all  stops,  and  be 
obliged  to  supply  the  verbal  matter ;  to  invent  extempore 
tragedies  to  answer  to  the  vagaie  gestures  of  an  inex2:)licable 
rambling  mime — these  are  faint  shadows  of  what  I  have 
undergone  from  a  series  of  the  ablest-executed  pieces  of 
this  empty  iHstrmnentnl  music. 

I  deny  not,  that  in  the  opening  of  a  concert,  I  have 
experienced  something  vastly  hdling  and  agTeeable : — 
afterwards  foUowetli  the  languor  and  tlie  oj^pression. — 
Like  that  disappointing  book  in  Patmos  ;  or,  like  the 
comings  on  of  melancholy,  described  by  Burton,  doth  music 
make  her  first  insinuating  approaches  : — "  ]\Iost  pleasant 
it  is  to  such  as  are  melancholy  given,  to  walk  alone  in 
some  soUtary  grove,  bet^\axt  wood  and  water,  by  some 
brook  side,  and  to  meditate  upon  some  delightsome  and 
pleasant  subject,  which  shall  affect  him  most,  amahilis 
insania,  and  mentis  gratissimus  error.     A  most  incom- 


56  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

parable  delight  to  build  castles  iu  the  ah',  to  go  smiling 
to  themselves,  acting  an  infinite  variety  of  parts,  which 
they  suppose,  and  strongly  imagine,  they  act,  or  that  they 
see  done. — So  delightsome  these  toys  at  first,  they  could 
spend  whole  days  and  nights  A^thout  sleep,  even  whole 
years  in  such  contemplations,  and  fantastical  meditations, 
which  are  like  so  many  dreams,  and  will  hardly  be  dra^vn 
from  them — winding  and  mi  winding  themselves  as  so 
many  clocks,  and  still  pleasing  their  humom's,  until  at  the 
last  the  SCENE  turns  upon  a  sudden,  and  they  being 
now  habitated  to  such  meditations  and  solitary  places,  can 
endm-e  no  company,  can  think  of  nothing  but  harsh  and 
distastefid  subjects.  Fear,  sorrow,  suspicion,  snhi'ustiais 
jnidur,  discontent,  cares,  and  weariness  of  life,  surprise 
them  on  a  sudden,  and  they  can  think  of  nothing  else : 
continually  suspecting,  no  sooner  are  their  eyes  open,  but 
this  infernal  plague  of  melancholy  seizeth  on  them,  and 
terrifies  their  soids,  representing  some  dismal  object  to 
then-  minds;  which  now,  by  no  means,  no  labom-,  no 
persuasions,  they  can  avoid,  they  cannot  be  rid  of,  they 
cannot  resist." 

Something  like  this  "  scene  turning  "  I  have  expe- 
rienced at  the  evening  parties,  at  the  house  of  my  good 

Catholic  friend  ]\^ov ;  who,  by  the  aid  of  a  capital 

organ,  himself  the  most  finished  of  players,  converts  his 
drawing-room  into  a  chapel,  his  week  days  into  Sundays, 
and  these  latter  into  minor  heavens.^ 

AVhen  my  friend  commences  upon  one  of  those  solemn 
anthems,  which  peradventm-e  struck  upon  my  heedless  ear, 
rambling  in  the  side  aisles  of  the  dim  Abbey,  some  five- 
and-thirty  years  since,  waking  a  new  sense,  and  putting  a 
soul  of  old  religion  into  my  young  apprehension — (whether 
it  be  that,  in  which  the  Psalmist,  weary  of  the  persecu- 
tions of  bad  men,  wisheth  to  himself  dove's  wings — or  that 
other  which,  with  a  like  measure  of  sobriety  and  pathos, 
inquireth  by  what  means  the  young  man  shall  best  cleanse 

^  I  have  l3een  there,  and  still  would  go — 
'Tis  like  a  little  heaven  below. — Dr.  Watts. 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  57 

Ills   miiid) — a  holy  calm   pervadetli  me. — I   am   for  the 
time 

rapt  above  earth, 

And  possess  joys  not  promised  at  my  birth. 

But  when  this  master  of  the  spell,  not  content  to  have 
laid  a  soul  jjrostrate,  goes  on,  in  his  power,  to  iuilict  more 
bliss  than  lies  in  her  capacity  to  receive — impatient  to 
overcome  her  "  earthly  "  with  his  "  heavenly," — still  pom-- 
iug  in,  for  protracted  hom's,  fresh  waves  and  fresh  from 
the  sea  of  sound,  or  from  that  inexliaiisted  German  ocean, 
above  which,  in  triumphant  progi-ess,  dolpliin-seatcd,  ride 
those  Aiions  Uaydn  and  Mozart,  with  then-  attendant 
Tritons,  Bach,  Beethoven,  and  a  coimtless  tribe,  whom  to 
attempt  to  reckon  up  would  but  plimge  me  again  in  the 
deeps, — I  stagger  imder  the  weight  of  harmony,  reeling 
to  and  fro  at  my  wits'  end  ; — clouds,  as  of  frankincense, 
oppress  me — priests,  altars,  censers,  dazzle  before  me — 
the  genius  of /^/.y  j'eligion  hath  me  in  her  toils — a  shadowy 
triple  tiara  invests  the  brow  of  my  friend,  late  so  naked, 
so  ingenuous — he  is  Pope, — and  by  him  sits,  like  as  in 
the  anomaly  of  dreams,  a  she-Pope  too, — tri-coronated 
like  himself  ! — I  am  converted,  and  yet  a  Protestant ; — 
at  once  malleus  liereticorum,  and  myself  gi"and  heresiarch  : 
or  three  heresies  centre  in  my  person :— I  am  Mai'cion, 
Ebion,  and  Cerinthus — Gog  and  Magog — what  not? — 
till  the  coming  in  of  the  friendly  sujiper-tray  dissipates  the 
figment,  and  a  draught  of  true  Lutheran  beer  (in  which 
rliiefly  my  friend  shows  himself  no  bigot)  at  once  recon- 
ciles me  to  the  rationalities  of  a  pm-er  faith ;  and  restores 
to  me  the  genuine  unterrifjing  aspects  of  my  pleasant- 
countenanced  host  and  hostess. 


58  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


ALL  FOOLS'  DAY. 


The  compliments  of  the  season  to  my  worthy  masters, 
and  a  merry  first  of  April  to  us  all  ! 

Many  hapjiy  retm^ns  of  this  day  to  yon — and  you — - 
and  you,  Sir — nay,  never  frown,  man,  nor  put  a  long  foce 
upon  the  matter.  Do  not  we  know  one  another  ?  what 
need  of  ceremony  among  friends  %  we  have  all  a  touch  of 
that  same — you  understand  me — a  speck  of  the  motley. 
Beshrew  the  man  who  on  such  a  day  as  this,  the  general 
festival,  should  affect  to  stand  aloof.  I  am  none  of  those 
sneakers.  I  am  free  of  the  corporation,  a,nd  care  not  who 
knows  it.  He  that  meets  me  in  the  forest  to-day,  shall 
meet  with  no  wise-acre,  I  can  tell  him.  Htultns  sum. 
Translate  me  that,  and  take  the  meaning  of  it  to  yourself 
for  your  pains.  What  !  man,  we  have  fom-  quarters  of 
the  glohe  on  om*  side,  at  the  least  computation. 

Fill  us  a  cup  of  that  sparkling  gooseberry — we  will 
drink  no  wise,  melancholy,  politic  port  on  this  day — and 
let  us  troll  the  catch  of  Amiens — due  ad  me — due  ad  me 
— how  goes  it  1 

Here  shall  he  see 
Gross  fools  as  he. 

Now  would  I  give  a  trifle  to  know,  historically  and 
authentically,  who  was  the  greatest  fool  that  ever  lived. 
I  would  certainly  give  him  in  a  bumper.  Marry,  of  the 
present  breed,  I  think  I  could  without  much  difficulty 
name  you  the  party. 

Remove  your  cap  a  little  further,  if  you  please  :  it 
hides  my  bauble.  And  now  each  man  bestride  his  hobby, 
and  dust  away  his  liells  to  what  tune  he  jjleascs.  I  will 
give  you,  for  my  part, 

-The  crazy  old  clmreh  clock, 


Ami  the  liewildercd  cliinie* 


ALL  fools'  day.  59 

Good  master  Emisedoclcs,"^  you  arc  welcome.  It  is 
long  since  you  went  a  salamander-gathering  down  iEtna. 
Worse  than  samphire-picking  by  some  odds.  'Tis  a  mercy 
yom'  worship  did  not  singe  your  mustachios. 

Ha  !  Cleombrotus  '.^  and  what  salads  in  faith  did  you 
light  upon  at  the  bottom  of  the  Mediterranean?  You 
were  founder,  I  take  it,  of  the  disinterested  sect  of  the 
Caleutmists. 

Gebir,  my  old  free-mason,  and  prince  of  plasterers  at 
Babel,^  bring  in  yom-  trowel,  most  Ancient  Grand  !  You 
have  claim  to  a  seat  here  at  my  right  hand,  as  patron  of 
the  stammerers.  You  left  yom-  work,  if  I  remember 
Herodotus  correctly,  at  eight  hundred  million  toises,  or 
thereabout,  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  Bless  us,  what 
a  long  bell  you  must  have  pulled,  to  call  your  top  -work- 
men to  their  uuncheon  on  the  low  grounds  of  Shinar. 
Or  did  you  send  up  your  garlic  and  onions  by  a  rocket  1 
I  am  a  rogue  if  I  am  not  ashamed  to  show  you  om-  Monu- 
ment on  Fish-street  Hill,  after  your  altitudes.  Yet  we 
think  it  somewhat. 

What,  the  magnanimous  Alexander  in  tears'* — cry, 
baby,  put  its  finger  in  its  eye,  it  shall  have  another  globe, 
round  as  an  orange,  pretty  moppet  ! 

Mister  Adams 'odso,  I  honoiu-  your  coat — pray 

do  us  the  favour  to  read  to  us  that  sermon,  which  you 
lent  to  Mistress  Slipslop — the  twenty  and  second  in  your 
portmanteau  there — on  Female  Incontinence — the  same 
— it  will  come  in  most  irrelevantly  and  impertinently 
seasonable  to  the  time  of  the  day. 

Good  Master  Raymund  Lully,  you  look  wise.  Pray 
correct  that  error. 

Dims,  spare  yom-  definitions.  I  must  fine  you  a 
bumper,  or  a  paradox.     We  will  have  nothing  said  or 

[1 He  who,  to  be  deem'd 

A  god,  leap'd  fondly  into  Etna  flames — ] 

[2 He  who,  to  enjoy 

Plato's  Elysium,  leap'd  into  the  sea — ] 

P  The  builders  next  of  Babel  on  the  plain 
Of  Senaar— ] 


60  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

done  syllogistically  tliis  day.  Remove  those  logical 
forms,  waiter,  that  no  gentleman  break  the  tender  shins 
of  his  ajDprehension  stumbling  across  them. 

Master  Stephen,  you  are  late. — Ha  !  Cokes,  is  it  you  1 
— Aguecheek,  my  dear  knight,  let  me  pay  my  devoir  to 
you. — Master  Shallow,  your  worship's  poor  servant  to 
command. — Master  Silence,  I  will  use  few  words  with 
you. — Slender,  it  shall  go  hard  if  I  edge  not  you  in 
somewhere. — You  six  will  cngro.ss  all  the  poor  Avit  of  the 
company  to-day. — I  know  it,  I  know  it. 

Ha  !  honest  R ,  my  fine  old  Librarian  of  Ludgate, 

time  out  of  mind,  art  thou  here  again  1  Bless  thy  doublet, 
it  is  not  over-new,  threadbare  as  thy  stories  : — what  dost 
thou  flitting  about  the  world  at  this  rate  1 — Thy  customers 
are  extinct,  defunct,  bed-rid,  have  ceased  to  read  long 
ago. — Thou  goest  still  among  them,  seeing  if,  peradven- 
ture,  thou  canst  hawk  a  volume  or  two. — Good  Granville 
S ,  thy  last  patron,  is  flown. 

King  Pandion,  he  is  dead, 

All  thy  frieuds  are  lapt  in  lead. — 

Nevertheless,  noble  R ■,  come  in,  and  take  yoiu- 

seat  here,  between  Armado  and  Quisada ;  for  in  true 
coiutosy,  in  gravity,  in  fantastic  smiling  to  thyself,  in 
com'teous  smiling  upon  others,  in  the  goodly  ornatm'e  of 
well-apparelled  speech,  and  the  commendation  of  wise 
sentences,  thou  art  nothing  inferior  to  those  accomplished 
Dons  of  Spain.  The  si^irit  of  chivalry  forsake  me  for  ever, 
when  I  forget  thy  singing  the  song  of  Macheath,  which 
declares  that  he  might  be  happy  toith  eitJicr,  situated 
between  those  two  ancient  spinsters — when  I  forget  the 
inimitable  formal  love  which  thou  didst  make,  turning 
now  to  the  one,  and  now  to  the  other,  with  tliat  Malvo- 
lian  smile — as  if  Cervantes,  not  Gay,  had  written  it  for 
his  hero ;  and  as  if  thousands  of  periods  must  revolve, 
liefore  the  mirror  of  courtesy  could  have  given  his  invidi- 
ous preference  between  a  pair  of  so  goodly-propertied  and 
meritorious-equal  damsels. 


ALL  fools'  day.  61 

To  descend  from  these  altitudes,  and  not  to  2irotract 
our  Fools'  Banquet  beyond  its  approi:)riate  day, — for  I 
fear  the  second  of  April  is  not  many  hours  distant — in 
sober  verity  I  will  confess  a  tnith  to  thee,  reader.  I  love 
a  Fool — as  natm-ally  as  if  I  were  of  kith  and  kin  to  him. 
When  a  child,  with  child-like  apprehensions,  that  dived 
not  below  the  siu-face  of  the  matter,  I  read  those  Parables 
— not  guessing  at  the  involved  wisdom — I  had  more 
yearnings  towards  that  simple  architect,  that  built  his 
house  upon  the  sand,  than  I  entertained  for  his  more 
cautious  neighbour :  I  grudged  at  the  hard  censitre  pro- 
nounced upon  the  quiet  soul  that  kept  his  talent ;  and — 
prizing  their  simplicity  beyond  the  more  provident,  and, 
to  my  ai^prehension,  somewhat  unfmiinhie  wariness  of 
their  competitors  —  I  felt  a  kindliness,  that  almost 
amounted  to  a  tenclre,  for  those  five  thouglitless  virgins. 
— I  have  never  made  an  acquaintance  since,  that  lasted  : 
or  a  friendship,  that  answered ;  with  any  that  had  not 
some  tincture  of  the  absiu'd  in  their  characters.  I  ven- 
erate an  honest  obUquity  of  understanding.  The  more 
laughable  blunders  a  man  shall  commit  in  yoirr  company, 
the  more  tests  he  giveth  you,  that  he  will  not  betray  or 
overreach  you.  I  love  the  safety  which  a  palpable  hallu- 
cination warrants ;  the  security,  which  a  word  out  of  sea- 
son ratifies.  And  take  my  word  for  this,  reader,  and  say 
a  fool  told  it  you,  if  you  please,  that  he  Avho  hath  not  a 
dram  of  folly  in  his  mixture,  hath  pounds  of  much  worse 
matter  in  his  composition.  It  is  observed,  that  "  the 
foolisher  the  fowl  or  fish, — woodcocks, — dotterels — cods'- 
heads,  etc.,  the  finer  the  flesh  thereof,"  and  what  are 
commonly  the  world's  received  fools  but  such  wliereof  the 
world  is  not  worthy^  and  what  have  been  some  of  the 
kindliest  patterns  of  our  species,  but  so  many  darlings  of 
absurdity,  minions  of  the  goddess,  and  her  white  boys  1 — 
Reader,  if  you  wrest  my  words  beyond  thek  fair  construc- 
tion, it  is  you,  and  not  I,  that  are  the  AiJril  Fool. 


62  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING. 

Still-born  Silence  !  thou  that  art 

Flood-gate  of  the  deeper  heart  ! 

OfVspring  of  a  heavenly  kind  ! 

Frost  o'  the  mouth,  and  thaw  o'  the  mind  ! 

Secrecy's  cunlidant,  and  he 

Who  makes  religion  mystery ! 

Adnuration's  speaking'st  tongue  ! 

Leave,  thy  desert  shades  among, 

lleverend  hermit's  hallow'd  cells, 

Wliere  retired  devotion  dwells  ! 

With  thy  enthusiasms  come. 

Seize  owe  tongues,  and  strike  us  dumb  !  ^ 

Reader,  would'st  thou  know  what  true  peace  and  quiet 
mean ;  would'st  thou  find  a  refuge  from  the  noises  and 
dam  ours  of  the  multitude  ;  would'st  thou  enjoy  at  once 
solitude  and  society ;  would'st  thou  possess  the  depth  of 
thine  own  spirit  in  stillness,  without  being  shut  out  from 
the  consolatory  faces  of  thy  species ;  would'st  thou  be 
alone  and  yet  accompanied ;  solitary,  yet  not  desolate ; 
singular,  yet  not  without  some  to  keep  thee  in  comite- 
nance ;  a  unit  in  aggregate ;  a  simple  in  composite  : — 
come  with  me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

Dost  thou  love  silence  deep  as  that  "  before  the  winds 
were  made"?  go  not  out  into  the  wilderness,  descend  not 
into  the  i^rofundities  of  the  earth  ;  shut  not  up  thy  case- 
ments ;  nor  pom*  wax  into  the  little  cells  of  thy  ears,  with 
little-faith'd  self-mistrusting  Ulysses. — Retire  with  me 
into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

For  a  man  to  refrain  even  from  good  words,  and  to 
hold  his  peace,  it  is  commendal)le  ;  but  for  a  nuiltitude  it 
is  great  mastery. 

What  is  the  stillness  of  the  desert  compared  with  this 

place  1  what  the  uncomnumicating  muteness  of  fishes  ? — 

here  the  goddess  reigns  and  revels. — "  Boreas,  and  Cesias, 

and  Argestes  loud,"  do  not  with  their  interconfounding 

^  From  "  Poems  of  all  sorts,"  by  Richard  Fleckno,  1653. 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.  63 

uproars  more  augment  the  brawl — nor  the  waves  of  the 
blown  Baltic  with  their  clubbed  sounds — than  their  oppo- 
site (Silence  her  sacred  self)  is  nuiltiplied  and  rendered 
more  intense  by  luunbers,  and  by  sympathy.  She  too 
hath  her  deeps,  that  call  unto  deeps.  Negation  itself 
hath  a  positive  more  and  less ;  and  closed  eyes  would 
seem  to  obscm-e  the  great  obscurity  of  midnight. 

There  are  wounds  Avhich  an  imperfect  solitude  cannot 
heal.  By  imi)erfect  I  mean  that  which  a  man  enjoyeth 
by  himself.  The  perfect  is  that  which  he  can  sometimes 
attain  in  crowds,  but  nowhere  so  absolutely  as  in  a 
Quakers'  Meeting.  —  Those  first  hermits  did  certainly 
understand  this  principle,  when  they  retired  into  Egyi^tian 
solitudes,  not  singly,  but  in  shoals,  to  enjoy  one  another's 
want  of  conversation.  The  Carthusian  is  bound  to  his 
brethren  by  this  agreeing  spirit  of  incommunicativeness. 
In  secular  occasions,  what  so  pleasant  as  to  be  reading  a 
book  through  a  long  winter  evening,  Avith  a  friend  sitting 
by — say,  a  wife — he,  or  she,  too,  (if  that  be  probable,) 
i-eading  another  without  interruption,  or  oral  comnumica- 
tion  1 — can  there  be  no  sympathy  without  the  gabble  of 
words  ? — away  with  this  inhuman,  shy,  single,  shade-and- 
cavern-haunting  solitariness.  Give  me.  Master  Zinuner- 
man,  a  sympathetic  solitude. 

To  pace  alone  in  the  cloisters  or  side  aisles  of  some 
cathedi-al,  time-stricken  ; 

Or  niiikr  hanging  monntains, 
Or  by  the  fall  of  fountains  ; 

is  but  a  vulgar  luxury  compared  \\dth  tliat  which  those 
enjoy  who  come  together  for  the  purposes  of  more  com- 
l^lete,  abstracted  solitude.  This  is  the  loneliness  "  to  be 
felt." — The  Abbey  Church  of  Westminster  hath  nothing 
so  solemn,  so  spirit  soothing,  as  the  naked  walls  and 
benches  of  a  Quakers'  Meeting.  Here  are  no  tombs,  no 
inscriptions. 

Sands,  ignoble  things, 

Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings — 


64  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

but  here  is  something  which  throws  Antiquity  herself  into 
the  fore-ground— Silence — eldest  of  things — Lxnguage  of 
okl  Night— primitive  discom-ser — to  which  the  insolent 
decays  of  mouldering  grandeur  have  but  arrived  by  a 
violent,  and,  as  we  may  say,  unnatural  progression. 

How  revei'end  is  tlie  view  of  these  luished  lieads, 
Looking  traiKXiiillity  ! 

Nothing  -  plotting,  nought  -  caballing,  unmiscliicvous 
synod  !  convocation  without  intrigue  !  parliament  \nthout 
debate  !  what  a  lesson  dost  thou  read  to  council,  and  to 
consistory  ! — if  my  pen  treat  of  you  hghtly — as  haply  it 
Avill  wander — yet  my  spirit  hath  gravely  felt  the  wisdom 
of  your  custom,  when,  sitting  among  you  in  deepest  peace, 
which  some  out-welling  tears  would  rather  confirm  than 
disturb,  I  have  reverted  to  the  times  of  y(.)ur  beginnings, 
and  the  sowings  of  the  seed  by  Fox  and  Dewesbury. — I 
have  witnessed  that  which  lirought  before  my  eyes  yoiu- 
heroic  tranquillity,  inilcxible  to  the  rude  jests  and  serious 
violences  of  the  insolent  soldiery,  republican  or  royalist, 
sent  to  molest  you — for  ye  sate  betwixt  the  fires  of  two 
persecutions,  the  outcast  and  off-scouring  of  church  and 
presbytery. — I  have  seen  the  reeling  sea-ruffian,  who  had 
wandered  into  your  receptacle  with  the  avowed  intention 
of  disturbing  yom-  quiet,  from  the  very  spirit  of  the  place 
receive  in  a  moment  a  new  heart,  and  presently  sit  among 
ye  as  a  lamb  amidst  lambs.  And  I  remember  Penn  before 
his  accusers,  and  Fox  in  the  bail  dock,  where  he  was 
lifted  up  in  spirit,  as  he  tells  us,  and  "  the  Judge  and  the 
Jm-y  became  as  dead  men  under  his  feet." 

Reader,  if  you  are  not  acquainted  with  it,  I  would 
recommend  to  you,  above  all  clnu'ch-narratives,  to  read 
Sewel's  History  of  the  Quakers.  It  is  in  folio,  and  is 
the  abstract  of  the  journals  of  Fox  and  the  primitive 
Friends.  It  is  far  more  edifying  and  affecting  than 
anything  you  will  read  of  Wesley  and  his  colleagues. 
Here  is  nothing  to  stagger  you,  nothing  to  make  you 
mistrust,  no  suspicion  of  alloy,  no  drop  or  dreg  of  the 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.  65 

worldly  or  amliitious  .sjjirit.  You  Avill  licre  read  the 
true  story  of  that  much-injured,  ridicided  man  (who  per- 
haps hath  been  a  by^vord  in  your  mouth) — James  Naylor : 
what  dreadful  sufferings,  with  what  patience,  he  endm-ed, 
even  to  the  boring  through  of  his  tongue  with  red-hot 
irons,  wdthout  a  murmm';  and  with  what  strength  of  mind, 
when  the  delusion  he  had  fallen  into,  wdiicli  they  stig- 
matised for  l)lasphemy,  had  given  way  to  clearer  thoughts, 
ho  could  renounce  his  error,  in  a  strain  of  the  beautifuUest 
humility,  yet  keep  his  fii'st  groimds,  and  be  a  Quaker 
still ! — so  different  from  the  i^ractice  of  yom*  common 
converts  from  enthusiasm,  who,  when  they  apostatize, 
apostatize  all,  and  think  they  can  never  get  far  enough 
from  the  society  of  theii'  former  errors,  even  to  the  re- 
lumciation  of  some  saving  truths,  with  which  they  had 
been  mingled,  not  implicated. 

Get  the  wi'itiugs  of  John  Woolman  V)y  heart ;  and 
love  the  early  Quakers. 

How  far  the  followers  of  these  good  men  in  our  days 
have  kept  to  the  primitive  si)irit,  or  in  what  proportion 
they  have  substituted  formality  fur  it,  tlie  Judge  of 
Spirits  can  alone  determine.  I  have  seen  fiices  in  their 
assemblies  ujjon  which  the  dove  sate  visibly  brooding. 
Others,  again,  I  have  watched,  when  my  thoughts  should 
have  been  better  engageil,  in  which  I  could  ]iossil)ly 
detect  nothing  l>ut  a  blank  inanity.  But  (piiet  was  in 
all,  and  the  disposition  to  imanimity,  and  the  absence  of 
the  fierce  controversial  workings. — If  the  spiritual  pre- 
tcnsit)ns  of  the  Quakers  have  ablated,  at  least  they  make 
few  pretences.  Hj^jocrites  they  certainly  are  not,  in 
their  preaching.  It  is  seldom,  indeed,  that  you  shall 
see  one  get  up  amongst  them  to  hold  forth.  Only  now 
and  then  a  trcml)ling,  female,  generally  ancient,  voice  is 
heard — you  cannot  guess  from  what  part  of  the  jneeting  it 
}n'oceeds — with  a  low,  buzzing,  musical  sound,  laying  out 
a  few  words  which  "she  thought  might  suit  the  condition  of 
some  present,"  with  a  (piakiiig  dittidence,  which  leaves  no 
l)0ssibility  of  sujiposing  that  anything  (if  female  vanity 

r 


G6  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EIJA. 

was  mixed  up,  where  the  tones  were  so  full  of  tenderness, 
and  a  restraining  modesty. — The  nuwi,  for  wliat  I  have 
observed,  sjoeak  seldomer. 

Once  only,  and  it  was  some  years  ago,  I  witnessed  a 
sample  of  the  old  Foxian  orgasm.  It  was  a  man  of 
giant  stature,  who,  as  Wordsworth  phrases  it,  might  have 
danced  "from  head  to  foot  equipt  in  iron  mail."  His 
frame  was  of  iron  too.  But  he  was  malleable.  I  saw 
him  shake  all  over  with  the  spirit — I  dare  not  say  of 
delusion.  The  strivings  of  the  outer  man  were  unutter- 
able— he  seemed  not  to  speak,  but  to  be  spoken  from.  I 
saw  the  strong  man  bowed  down,  and  his  knees  to  fail — 
his  joints  all  seemed  loosening — it  was -a  figm-e  to  set  off 
against  Paul  preaching — the  words  he  uttered  were  few, 
and  sound— he  was  evidently  resisting  his  will — keeping 
down  his  own  word-wisdom  with  more  mighty  effort  than 
the  world's  orators  strain  for  theirs.  "  He  had  been  a 
WIT  in  his  youth,"  he  told  us,  with  expressions  of  a 
solder  remorse.  And  it  was  not  till  long  after  the  im- 
pression had  begun  to  wear  away  that  I  was  enabled, 
with  something  like  a  smile,  to  recall  the  striking  incon- 
gruity of  the  confession — understanding  the  term  in  its 
worldly  acceptation — with  the  frame  and  physiognomy 
of  the  person  before  me.  His  brow  would  have  scared 
away  the  Levities — the  Jocos  Risus-que — faster  than  the 
Loves  tied  the  face  of  Dis  at  Enna. — By  u-it,  even  in  his 
youth,  I  will  l)e  sworn  he  understood  something  far 
within  the  limits  of  an  allowable  liberty. 

More  frequently  the  Meeting  is  broken  up  without  a 
word  having  been  spoken.  But  the  mind  has  been  fed. 
You  go  away  Math  a  sermon  not  made  with  hands.  You 
have  been  in  the  milder  caverns  of  Trophonius  ;  or  as  in 
some  den,  where  that  fiercest  and  savagest  of  all  wild 
creatures,  the  Tongue,  that  unruly  member,  has  strangely 
lain  tied  up  and  captive.  You  have  liathed  with  still- 
ness.—  0,  when  the  spirit  is  sore  fretted,  even  tired  to 
sickness  of  the  janglings  and  nonsense-noises  of  the  world, 
what  a  balm  and  a  solace  it  is  to  go  and  seat  yom-self 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCIIOOLMASTEI!.  G7 

for  a  quiet  half-hour  upou  some  undisputed  corner  of  a 
bench,  among  tlie  gentle  Quakers  ! 

Their  garli  and  stillness  conjoined,  present  a  luiiformity, 
tranquil  and  herd-like — as  in  the  pasture — "  forty  feeding- 
like  one."  — 

The  very  garments  of  a  Quaker  seem  incapahlc  of  re- 
ceiving a  soil ;  and  cleanliness  in  them  to  he  something 
more  than  the  alisence  of  its  contrary.  Every  Quakeress 
is  a  lily ;  and  when  they  come  up  in  bands  to  their 
Whitsun  conferences,  whitening  the  easterly  streets  of  the 
metropolis,  from  all  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom,  they 
show  like  troops  of  the  Shining  Ones. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

My  reading  has  been  lamentably  desultory  and  imme- 
thodical.  Odd,  out  of  the  way,  old  English  plays,  and 
treatises,  have  supplied  me  with  most  of  my  notions, 
and  ways  of  feeling.  In  everything  that  relates  to 
science,  I  am  a  whole  Eucyclopsedia  behind  the  rest  of  the 
world.  I  should  have  scarcely  cut  a  figure  among  the 
franklins,  or  country  gentlemen,  in  King  John's  days.  I 
know  less  geography  than  a  schoolboy  of  six  weeks' 
standing.  To  me  a  map  of  old  Ortelius  is  as  authentic 
as  Arrowsmith.  I  do  not  know  whereabout  Africa 
merges  into  Asia ;  whether  Ethiopia  lie  in  one  or  other  of 
those  great  divisions;  nor  can  form  the  remotest  conjecture 
of  the  position  of  New  South  Wales,  or  Van  Diemen's 
Land.  Yet  do  I  hold  a  correspondence  with  a  very  dear 
friend  in  the  first-named  of  these  two  Terra)  Incognitse. 
I  have  no  astronomy.  I  do  not  know  where  to  look  for 
the  Bear,  or  Charles's  Wain ;  the  place  of  any  star ;  or 
the  name  of  any  of  them  at  sight.  I  guess  at  Venus 
only  by  her  brightness — and  if  the  sim  on  some  portent- 
ous morn  were  to  make  his  first  appearance  in  the  West, 
I  verily  believe,  that,  while  all  the  world  were  gasping 


68  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

in  apprehension  aljout  me,  I  alone  should  stand  unterrified, 
from  sheer  incuriosity  and  want  of  observation.  Of 
history  and  chronology  I  possess  some  vague  points,  such 
as  one  cannot  help  picking  up  in  the  com-se  of  miscel- 
laneous study;  but  I  never  deliberately  sat  do^vn  to  a 
chronicle,  even  of  my  own  countiy.  I  have  most  dim 
a})i)rehcnsions  of  the  four  great  monarchies ;  and  some 
times  the  Assyrian,  sometimes  the  Persian,  floats  as  first 
in  my  foncy.  I  make  the  widest  conjectures  concerning 
Egypt,  and  her  shepherd  kings.  My  friend  ill,  with 
great  j^ainstaking,  got  me  to  think  I  understood  the  first 
proposition  in  Euclid,  but  gave  me  over  in  despair  at  the 
second.  I  am  entirely  miacquainted  with  the  modern 
langaiages;  and,  like  a  better  man  than  myself,  have 
"  small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  I  am  a  stranger  to  the 
shai)es  and  texture  of  the  commonest  trees,  herbs,  flowers 
— not  from  the  circumstance  of  my  being  town-born — for 
I  should  have  brought  the  same  inobservant  sjjirit  into 
the  world  with  me,  had  I  fii'st  seen  it  "  on  Devon's 
leafy  shores," — and  am  no  less  at  a  loss  among  pm-ely 
town  objects,  tools,  engines,  mechanic  processes. — Not 
that  I  affect  ignorance — luit  my  head  has  not  many 
mansions,  nor  spacious ;  and  I  have  been  obliged  to  fill 
it  with  such  cabinet  curiosities  as  it  can  hold  without 
aching.  I  sometimes  wonder  how  I  have  passed  my 
probation  with  so  little  discredit  in  the  world,  as  I  have 
done,  upon  so  meagre  a  stock.  But  the  fact  is,  a  man 
may  do  very  well  with  a  very  little  knowledge,  and 
scarce  be  found  out,  in  mixed  company ;  everyliody  is  so 
much  more  ready  to  produce  his  own,  than  to  call  for  a 
display  of  yom-  acrpiisitions.  But  in  a  tHe-d-tHe  there  is 
no  shuffling.  The  truth  will  out.  There  is  nothing 
wliich  I  dread  so  much,  as  the  being  left  alone  for  a 
quart(!r  of  an  hour  with  a  sensible,  well-informed  man, 
that  does  not  know  me.  I  lately  got  into  a  dilemma  of 
this  sort. — 

In  one  of  my  daily  jaunts  between  Bishopsgate  and 
Shncklewell,  the  coach  stopped  to  take  up  a  staid-looking 


THE  OLD  AND  THIi   NEW  SCI10(»l..AlASTJ':i;.  69 

gentleman,  ahout  the  wrong  yide  of  tliirty,  who  wa,s  giving 
his  parting  directions  (while  the  steps  were  adjusting),  in 
a  tone  of  inild  authority,  to  a  tall  youth,  who  seemed  to 
be  neither  his  clerk,  his  son,  nor  his  servant,  Init  some- 
thing partaking  of  all  three.  The  youth  was  ilismissed, 
and  we  drove  on.  As  we  were  the  sole  passengers,  he 
naturally  enough  addressed  his  couA^ersatiou  to  me ;  and 
we  discussed  the  merits  of  the  fare ;  the  civility  and 
]»unctuality  of  the  driver;  the  cu'cmnstance  of  an  opposi- 
tion coach  having  been  lately  set  up,  with  the  i)rol)al)ilities 
of  its  success — to  all  wdiich  I  was  enaltled  to  return  pretty 
satisfactory  answers,  having  been  drilled  into  this  kind  of 
etiquette  by  some  years'  daily  practice  of  riding  to  and  fro 
in  the  stage  aforesaid — wlien  he  suddenly  alai-mcd  me  by 
a  startling  question,  whether  I  had  seen  the  show^  of  prize 
cattle  that  morning  in  Snuthfield  1  Now,  as  I  had  not 
seen  it,  and  do  not  gi'catly  care  for  such  sort  of  exhibi- 
tions, I  was  obliged  to  retm'u  a  cold  negative.  He 
seemed  a  little  mortified,  as  well  as  astonished,  at  my 
declaration,  as  (it  appeared)  he  was  just  come  fresh  from 
the  sight,  and  doubtless  had  hoped  to  conqiare  notes  on 
the  sul)ject.  However,  he  assirred  me  that  I  had  lost  a 
fine  treat,  as  it  far  exceeded  the  show  of  last  year.  We 
were  now  apijroaching  Norton  Folgate,  when  the  sight  of 
some  shoi^-goods  ticketed  freshened  him  up  into  a  disser- 
tation upon  the  cheapness  of  cottons  this  si)ring.  I  was 
now  a  little  in  heart,  as  the  natm'e  of  my  uKjrning  avoca- 
tions had  brought  me  into  some  sort  of  fiimiliarity  with 
the  raw  material ;  and  I  was  smprised  to  find  how 
eloquent  I  was  becoming  on  the  state  of  the  India 
market ;  when,  presently,  he  dashed  my  incipient  vanity 
to  the  earth  at  once,  by  inquiring  whether  I  had  ever 
made  any  calculation  as  to  the  value  of  the  rental  of  all 
the  retail  shops  in  London.  Had  he  asked  of  me  what 
song  the  SjTens  sang,  or  what  name  Achilles  assinned 
when  he  hid  himself  among  women,  I  might,  with  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  have  hazarded  a  "wide  solution."  ^ 
1  Uru  Burial. 


70  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

My  comiuuiiiiii  saw  my  ciiiliari'assiiiciit,  and,  the  alius- 
hoiises  beyond  SlioR'ditch  just  coniiiig  in  view,  with 
great  good-nature  and  dexterity  sliiftetl  his  conversation 
to  the  subject  of  public  charities ;  which  led  to  the  com- 
parative merits  of  provision  for  the  j^oor  in  past  and 
present  times,  with  observations  on  the  old  monastic 
institutions,  and  charitable  orders  ;  but,  finding  me  rather 
dimly  imi)ressed  with  some  glimmering  notions  from  old 
poetic  associations,  than  strongly  fortifieil  with  any  specu- 
lations reducible  to  calculation  on  the  subject,  he  gave 
the  matter  up ;  and,  the  country  begiiming  to  open  more 
and  more  upon  us,  as  we  a])in-oached  the  tm-ni)ike  at 
Kingsland  (the  destined  termination  of  his  journey),  he 
2)ut  a  honu!  thrust  u|)on  me,  in  the  most  unfortunate 
position  he  could  have  chosen,  l)y  advancing  some  queries 
relative  to  the  Nortli  Pole  Expedition.  While  I  was 
nuittering  out  something  about  the  Panorama  of  those 
strange  regions  (which  I  had  actually  seen),  by  W'ay  of 
parrying  the  question,  the  coach  stopping  relieved  me 
from  any  further  apprehensions.  My  companion  getting 
out,  left  me  in  the  comfortable  possession  of  my  ignor- 
ance ;  and  I  heard  him,  as  he  went  ott",  putting  questions 
to  an  outside  passenger,  who  had  alighted  with  him, 
regarding  an  epidemic  disorder  that  had  been  rife  about 
Dalston,  and  which  my  frien<l  assured  him  had  gone 
through  five  or  six  schools  in  that  neighbourhood.  The 
truth  now  flashed- ui)on  me,  that  my  companion  was  a 
schoolmaster ;  and  that  the  youth,  whom  he  had  parted 
from  at  om*  fij'st  acquaintance,  must  have  been  one  of  the 
bigger  boys,  or  the  usher. — He  was  evidently  a  kind- 
hearted  man,  who  did  not  seem  so  much  desirous  of  pro- 
voking discussion  by  the  questions  which  he  put,  as  of 
obtaining  information  at  any  rate.  It  did  not  appear 
that  lie  took  any  interest,  either,  in  such  kind  of  incjuiries, 
for  their  own  sake ;  but  that  he  was  in  some  way  bound 
to  seek  for  knowledge.  A  greenish-coloured  coat,  whicli 
he  had  on,  forltade  me  to  surmise  that  he  was  a  clergy- 
man.    The  advcntm'e  irave  birth  to  some  reflections  on 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLBrASTEI!.  71 

the  difference  between  persons  of  his  profession  in  past 
and  present  times. 

Rest  to  the  souls  of  tliose  fine  old  Pedagogues ;  the 
breed,  long  since  extinct,  of  the  Lilys,  and  the  Liuacres  : 
who  believing  that  all  learning  was  contained  in  the  lan- 
guages which  they  taught,  and  despising  every  other 
acquirement  as  superficial  and  useless,  came  to  their  task 
as  to  a  sport !  Passing  from  infancy  to  age,  they  dreamed 
away  all  their  days  as  in  a  grammar-school.  Revolving 
in  a  perpetual  cycle  of  declensions,  conjugations,  syntaxes, 
and  prosodies  ;  renewing  constantly  tlie  occupations  which 
had  charmed  their  studious  childhood  ;  rehearsing  con- 
tinually the  part  of  the  past ;  life  must  have  slipjied  from 
them  at  last  like  one  day.  They  w^re  ah^'ays  in  their 
fh'st  garden,  reaping  harvests  of  their  golden  time,  among 
their  Flori-  and  their  Spki-legia ;  in  Arcadia  still,  but 
kings  ;  the  ferule  of  their  sway  not  much  harsher,  Init 
of  like  dignity  with  that  mild  sceptre  attributed  to  king 
Basileus  ;  the  Greek  and  Latin,  theu'  stately  Pamela  and 
their  Philoclea  ;  with  the  occasional  duncery  of  some  un- 
toward tjTO,  serving  for  a  refreshing  interlude  of  a  Mopsa, 
or  a  clown  Damostas  ! 

With  what  a  savour  doth  the  Preface  to  Colet's,  or 
(as  it  is  sometimes  called)  Paul's  Accidence,  set  fortli ! 
"  To  exhort  every  man  to  the  learning  of  grammar,  that 
intendeth  to  attain  the  imderstanding  of  the  tongues, 
wlierein  is  contained  a  great  treasury  of  wisdom  and 
knowledge,  it  wa)uld  seem  Imt  vain  and  lost  labom- ;  for 
so  much  as  it  is  known,  that  nothing  can  surely  be  ended, 
whose  beginning  is  either  feeble  or  faulty  ;  and  no  l^uild- 
ing  be  perfect  whereas  the  foundation  and  groundwork  is 
ready  to  fall,  and  luiable  to  uphold  the  burden  of  the 
frame."  How  well  doth  this  stately  preamble  (compar- 
able to  those  which  Milton  commendeth  as  "  having  been 
the  usage  to  prefix  to  some  solemn  law,  then  fu'st  pro- 
midgated  by  Solon  or  Lyciu'gus ")  correspond  witli  and 
illustrate  that  pious  zeal  for  conformity,  expressed  in  a 
succeeding  clause,   which   would  fence   about  grammar- 


72  THE  ESSAYS  (IF  EIJA. 

rules  Willi  the  severity  of  faith-articles! — "as  for  the 
diversity  of  grammars,  it  is  well  ])rofital)ly  taken  away 
l)y  the  King's  Majesties  wisdom,  who  foreseeing  the  in- 
(^onvenience,  and  ftxvouraljly  pro vi<  ling  tlu;  remedie,  caused 
one  kind  of  grammar  by  sundry  learned  men  to  be  dili- 
gently drawn,  and  so  to  be  set  out,  only  everywhere  to 
be  taught  for  the  use  of  learners,  and  for  the  hurt  in 
changing  of  schoolmaisters."  What  a  (juMd  in  that  whicrh 
follows  :  "wherein  it  is  profitable  that  lu>  (the  pupil)  can 
orderly  decline  his  noun  and  his  verl)."     llh  noun  ! 

The  fine  dream  is  fading  away  fast  ;  and  the  least 
concern  of  a  teacher  in  the  jjresent  day  is  to  inculcate 
granunar-rules. 

The  modern  schoolmaster  is  exi)ected  to  know  a  little 
of  everything,  because  his  pupil  is  required  not  to  be 
entirely  ignorant  of  anything.  He  must  be  superficially, 
if  I  may  so  say,  omniscient.  He  is  to  know  something 
of  pneumatics ;  of  chennstry  ;  of  whatever  is  curious  or 
l)roi)er  to  excite  the  attention  of  the  youthful  mind ;  an 
insight  into  mechanics  is  desirable,  with  a  touch  of 
statistics ;  tlie  quality  of  soils,  etc.,  botany,  the  con- 
stitution of  his  country,  cnvi  midtis  aliis.  You  may  get 
a  notion  of  some  part  of  his  exijected  duties  by  considt- 
ing  the  famous  Tractate  on  Education,  addressed  to  Mr. 
Hartlib. 

All  these  things — these,  or  the  desire  of  them — he  is 
exi)e(;ted  to  instil,  not  by  set  lessons  from  professors, 
which  he  may  charge  in  the  bill,  but  at  school  intervals, 
as  he  walks  the  streets,  or  saunters  through  green  fields 
(those  natural  instructoi-s),  with  his  pupils.  The  least 
])art  of  what  is  expected  from  him  is  to  be  done  in  school- 
hours.  He  nuist  insiimate  knowledge  at  the  moil  in 
U'iin>(>ra  faiidi.  He  must  seize  every  occasion  —  the 
season  of  the  year — the  time  of  the  day — a  passuig  cloud 
— a  rainbow — a  waggon  of  hay — a  regiment  of  soldiers 
going  by — to  inculcate  something  useful.  He  can  receive 
no  ])leasure  from  a  casual  glimpse  of  Nature,  but  must 
catch  at  it  as  an  object  of  instruction.     He  nuist  inter- 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  S('JlO(  iLMASTEl!.  / .) 

pret  beauty  into  the  picturesque.  He  eaiaiot  relish  a 
l)ei,'gar-maii,  or  a  gipsy,  for  thinking  of  the  suita1)le  ini- 
proveiuent.  Nothing  conies  to  him,  not  spoiled  by  the 
sophisticating  medium  of  moral  uses.  The  Universe — 
that  Great  Book,  as  it  has  been  called — is  to  him,  indeed, 
to  all  intents  and  pm-poses,  a  book  out  of  which  he  is 
doomed  to  read  tedious  homilies  to  distasting  schoolboys. 
— Vacations  themselves  arc  none  to  him,  he  is  only  rather 
worse  off  than  before ;  for  commonly  he  has  some  in- 
trusive upper-1)oy  fsistened  upon  him  at  such  times  ;  some 
cadet  of  a  great  family  ;  some  neglected  lumj)  of  noltility, 
or  gentry;  that  he  must  drag  after  him  to  the  jday,  to 
the  Panorama,  to  Mr.  Bartley's  Orrery,  to  the  Panopticon, 
or  into  the  country,  to  a  friend's  house,  or  his  flxvourite 
A\atering-place.  Wherever  he  goes  this  imeasy  shadow 
attends  him.  A  boy  is  at  liis  board,  and  in  his  path,  and 
in  all  his  movements.     He  is  Ijoy-rid,  sick  of  perpetual  boy. 

Boys  are  capital  fellows  in  theu-  own  way,  among  their 
mates ;  but  they  arc  imwholesome  companions  for  grown 
people.  The  restraint  is  felt  no  less  on  the  one  side  than 
on  the  other.  —  Even  a  child,  that  "plaything  for  an 
hour,"  tires  always.  The  noises  of  children,  playing  their 
own  fancies — as  I  now  hearken  to  them,  by  fits,  sporting 
on  the  green  Itefore  my  -wdndow,  while  I  am  engaged  in 
these  grave  siieculations  at  my  neat  suliurbaii  retreat  at 
Shacklewell — by  distance  made  more  sweet- — inexpressibly 
take  from  the  labom-  of  my  task.  It  is  like  A\Titing  to 
nuisic.  They  seem  to  modulate  my  i)eriods.  They  ought 
at  least  to  do  so — for  m  the  voice  of  that  tender  age  there 
is  a  kind  of  poetiy,  far  unlike  the  harsh  prose-accents  of 
man's  conversation. — I  shoidd  but  spoil  their  sport,  and 
diminish  my  oavu  sympathy  for  them,  by  mingling  in 
their  pastime. 

I  would  not  l)e  domesticated  all  my  days  with  a  person 
of  very  superior  capacity  to  my  own — not,  if  I  know  my- 
self at  all,  from  any  considerations  of  jealousy  or  self-com- 
parison, for  the  occasional  communion  with  such  minds 
has  constituted  the  fortune  and  felicity  of  my  life — but 


74  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

the  lialdt  of  too  constant  intcirour.se  \\itli  spirits  above 
you,  instead  of  raisini;-  you,  kvvpii  you  down.  Too  frequent 
doses  of  orii,dnal  thinking  from  otliers  restrain  what  lesser 
portion  of  that  faculty  you  may  possess  of  your  own. 
You  get  entangled  in  another  man's  mind,  even  as  you 
lose  yom-self  in  another  man's  grounds.  You  are  walking 
with  a  tall  varlet,  whose  strides  out-pace  yours  to  lassi- 
tude. The  constant  operation  of  such  potent  agency 
would  reduce  me,  I  am  convinced,  to  imbecility.  You 
may  derive  thoughts  from  others  ;  yoiu-  way  of  thinking, 
the  mould  in  which  yom-  thoughts  are  cast,  must  be  your 
own.  Intellect  may  be  imparted,  but  not  each  man's 
intellectual  frame. — 

As  little  as  I  should  Avish  to  be  always  thus  dragged 
uinvard,  as  little  (or  rather  still  less)  is  it  desirable  to  be 
stunted  downwards  by  yoiu-  associates.  The  trumpet  does 
not  more  stun  you  by  its  loudness,  than  a  whisper  teases 
you  by  its  provoking  inaudibility. 

Why  are  we  never  quite  at  om-  ease  in  tlie  pi-esence  of 
a  schoolmaster  ? — because  we  are  conscious  that  he  is  not 
qiute  at  his  ease  in  ours.  He  is  awkward,  and  out  of 
place  in  the  society  of  his  equals.  He  conies  like  Gidliver 
from  among  his  little  people,  and  he  cannot  fit  the  stature 
of  his  understanding  to  yours.  He  ca,miot  meet  you  on 
the  square.  He  wants  a  point  given  him,  like  an  in- 
different whist-playcr.  He  is  so  used  to  teaching,  that 
he  wants  to  be  teaching  ^on.  One  of  these  prcjfessore, 
upon  my  complaining  that  these  little  sketches  of  mine 
were  anything  but  methodical,  and  that  I  was  unable  to 
make  them  otherwise,  kindly  offered  to  instruct  me  in 
the  method  by  which  young  gentlemen  in  his  seminary 
were  taught  to  compose  English  themes.  The  jests  of  a 
schoolmaster  are  coarse,  or  thin.  They  do  not  ell  out  of 
school.  He  is  under  the  restraint  of  a  formal  or  didac- 
tive  hypocrisy  in  company,  as  a  clergyman  is  under  a 
moral  one.  He  can  no  more  let  his  intellect  loose  in 
society  than  the  other  can  his  inclinations.  He  is  forlorn 
among  his  coevals  ;  his  juniors  cannot  be  his  friends. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SlTIOOLMAS'lElt.  75 

"  I  take  ])lame  to  nij-.self,"  said  a  .srn.siljle  iiiaii  of  this 
proff.s.siun,  -writing  to  a  friend  respecting  a  youth  who  had 
quitted  his  scliool  abruptly,  "  that  your  iiepliew  was  not 
more  attached  to  me.  But  persons  in  my  situation  are 
more  to  l)e  ]ntied  than  can  Avell  be  imagined.  We  are 
surrounded  by  young,  and,  consequently,  ardently  affec- 
tionate hearts,  but  ^ce  can  never  hope  to  share  an  atom 
of  their  aft'ections.  The  relation  of  master  and  scholar 
forbids  this.  Hoiu  ijleasing  this  imist  he  to  you,  lum  I 
envy  your  feelings  !  my  friends  will  sometimes  say  to  me, 
when  they  see  yoimg  men  whom  I  have  educatecl,  return 
after  some  years'  absence  from  school,  theii'  eyes  shining 
with  pleasm-e,  while  they  shake  hands  ^\-ith  their-  old 
master,  bringing  a  present  of  game  to  me,  or  a  toy  to  my 
wife,  and  thanking  me  in  the  warmest  terms  for  my  care 
of  then-  education.  A  holiday  is  begged  for  the  boys ; 
the  house  is  a  scene  of  hajjpiuess  ;  I,  only,  am  sad  at 
heart. — This  fine-spirited  and  warm-hearted  youth,  who 
fancies  he  repays  his  master  with  gratitude  for  the  care 
of  his  boyish  years — ^this  young  man — in  the  eight  long 
years  I  watched  over  him  with  a  parent's  anxiety,  never 
coidd  repay  me  with  one  look  of  genuine  feehng.  He 
was  proud,  when  I  praised ;  he  was  submissive,  when  I 
reproved  him ;  but  he  did  never  love  me — and  what  he 
now  mistakes  for  gratitude  and  kindness  for  me,  is  but 
tlie  i:»leasant  sensation  which  all  persons  feel  at  revisiting 
the  scenes  of  their  Ijoyish  hopes  and  fears  ;  and  the  seeing 
on  ef[ual  terms  the  man  they  were  accustomed  to  look  up 
to  wdth  reverence.  My  wife,  too,"  this  interestmg  cor- 
respondent goes  on  to  say,  "  my  once  darling  Anna,  is  the 
wife  of  a  schoolmaster. — When  I  married  her — knr)wing 
that  the  -wdfe  of  a  schoolmaster  ought  to  be  a  busy  notable 
creatme,  and  fearing  that  my  gentle  Anna  Avoidd  ill  sui)ply 
the  loss  of  my  dear  bustling  mother,  just  then  dead,  who 
never  sat  still,  was  in  every  part  of  the  house  in  a 
moment,  and  whom  I  was  obliged  sometimes  to  threaten 
to  fiisten  do^^^l  in  a  chaii-,  to  save  her  from  fatiguing 
herself  to  death — I  expressed  my  fears  that  I  was  bring 


7fi  THE  ESSAYS  ()E  ELIA. 

iii.i;-  her  into  a  way  of  life  uiisuitablo  to  lior  ;  ami  .slic, 
who  loved  me  tenderly,  pronii.sed  for  my  sake  to  exert 
herself  to  perform  the  duties  of  her  new  situation.  She 
promised,  and  she  has  kept  her  word.  Wliat  wonders  will 
not  woman's  love  iierform  1 — My  house  is  managed  with 
a  propriety  and  decorum  unknown  in  other  schools ;  my 
boys  are  well  fed,  look  healthy,  and  have  every  proper 
accommodation ;  and  all  this  performed  with  a  careful 
economy,  that  never  descends  to  meanness.  But  I  have 
lost  my  gentle  helpless  Anna  !  Wlieu  we  sit  down  to 
enjf)y  an  liour  of  repos^e  after  tlie  fotiguc  of  the  day,  I  am 
compelled  to  listen  to  what  have  been  her  useful  (and 
they  are  really  useful)  employments  througli  the  day,  and 
what  she  proposes  for  her  to-morrow's  task.  Her  heart 
and  her  features  are  changed  by  the  duties  of  her  situation. 
To  the  boys,  she  never  appears  other  than  the  master's 
wife,  and  she  looks  up  to  me  as  the  bo?/s'  maste7\-  to 
whom  all  show  of  love  and  affection  would  be  highly 
improper,  and  imbecoming  the  dignity  of  her  situation  and 
mine.  Yet  this  my  gratitude  forbids  me  to  hint  to  her. 
Vi)Y  my  sake  she  subnutted  to  be  this  altered  creature, 
anil  can  I  reproach  lier  for  it  ?" — For  the  comnumication 
of  this  letter  I  am  indebted  to  my  cousin  Bridget. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES. 

I  am  of  a  constitution  so  general,  that  it  consorts  and  sympa- 
tliisuth  with  all  things  ;  I  have  no  antipathy,  or  rather  idiosyn- 
crasy in  anytliing.  Those  natural  rejnignancies  do  not  touch  nic, 
nor  do  I  behold  with  i)rejudice  the  French,  Italian,  Spaniard,  or 
Dutch.  — lidigio  Medici. 

That  tlic  author  of  the  Religio  Medici  mounted  upon  the 
airy  stilts  of  abstraction,  conversant  al)Out  notional  and 
conjectural  essences ;  in  whose  categories  of  Being  the 
])ossible  took  the  upjjer  hand  of  the  actual ;  should  have 


IMPERFECT  SYIMPATHIES.  (  7 

overlooked  the  impertinent  individualities  of  such  poor 
concretions  as  mankind,  is  not  much  to  be  admired.  It 
is  rather  to  be  wondered  at,  that  in  the  genus  of  animals 
he  should  have  condescended  to  distinguish  that  species 
at  all.  For  myself — earth -bovmd  and  fettered  to  the 
scene  of  my  activities, — 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  sky, 

I  confess  that  I  do  feel  the  differences  of  mankind,  national 
or  individual,  to  an  unhealthy  excess.  I  can  look  with  no 
indifferent  eye  upon  things  or  persons.  Whatever  is,  is 
to  me  a  matter  of  taste  or  distaste ;  or  when  once  it 
becomes  indifferent  it  begins  to  be  disrelishing.  I  am,  in 
plainer  words,  a  bundle  of  prejudices — made  u})  of  likings 
and  dislikings — the  veriest  thrall  to  sympathies,  apathies, 
antipathies.  In  a  certain  sense,  I  hope  it  may  be  said  of 
me  that  I  am  a  lover  of  my  species.  I  can  feel  for  all 
indifferently,  but  I  cannot  feel  towards  all  equally.  The 
more  purely-English  word  that  expresses  sympathy,  will 
better  explain  my  meanuig.  I  can  be  a  friend  to  a  worthy 
man,  ^\^ho  upon  another  accoimt  cannot  be  my  mate  or 
fcllou'.     I  cannot  like  all  peoi^le  alike.^ 

1  I  would  be  understood  as  confining  myself  to  the  subject  of 
inixierfect  symiiathies.  To  nations  or  classes  of  raen  there  can  be 
no  direct  antipathy.  There  may  be  individuals  born  and  constel- 
lated so  opposite  to  another  individual  nature,  that  the  same  sphere 
cannot  hold  them.  I  have  met  with  my  moral  antipodes,  and  can 
believe  the  story  of  two  persons  meeting  (who  never  saw  one 
another  before  in  their  lives)  and  instantly  fighthig. 

-We  by  proof  find  there  should  be 


'Twixt  man  and  man  such  an  antipathy, 
That  though  he  can  show  no  just  reason  why 
For  any  former  wrong  or  injury. 
Can  neither  find  a  l:»lenash  in  his  fame. 
Nor  aught  in  face  or  feature  justly  blame, 
Can  challenge  or  accuse  hun  of  no  evil. 
Yet  notwithstanding  hates  him  as  a  devil. 

The  lines  are  from  old  Ileywood's  "Hierarchic  of  Angels,"  and 
he  subjoins  a  curious  story  in  confirmation,  of  a  Spaniard  who 
attempted  to  assassinate  a  king  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and  being  put 


78  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

I  have  been  trying  ;ill  my  life  to  like  Scotchmen,  and 
am  ol)lige(l  to  desist  from  the  experiment  in  desjiair. 
Tliey  cannot  like  me — and  in  truth,  I  never  knew  one  of 
that  nation  who  attemjited  to  do  it.  There  is  something 
more  plain  and  ingenuous  in  their  mode  of  proceeding. 
We  know  one  another  at  iirst  sight.  There  is  an  order 
of  imperfect  intellects  (under  which  mine  must  he  content 
to  rank)  which  in  its  constitution  is  essentially  anti- 
Caledonian.  The  owners  of  the  sort  of  faculties  I  allude 
to,  have  minds  rather  suggestive  than  comi)rehensive. 
They  have  no  pretences  to  much  clearness  or  precision  in 
their  ideas,  or  in  their  manner  of  expressing  them.  Their 
intellectual  wardrobe  (to  confess  fairly)  has  few  whole 
pieces  in  it.  They  are  content  with  fragments  and 
scattered  pieces  of  Truth.  She  presents  no  fidl  front  to 
them — a  featiu-e  or  side-face  at  the  most.  Hints  and 
glimpses,  germs  and  erude  essays  at  a  system,  is  the 
utmost  they  pretend  to.  They  beat  up  a  little  game 
])eradveuture  —  and  leave  it  to  knottier  heads,  more 
robust  constitutions,  to  run  it  down.  The  light  that 
lights  them  is  not  steady  and  polar,  but  mutable  and 
shifting :  waxing,  and  again  waning.  Their  conversation 
is  accordingly.  Tliey  will  throw  out  a  random  word  in 
or  out  of  season,  and  be  content  to  let  it  pass  for  what  it 
is  worth.  They  cannot  speak  always  as  if  they  were  upon 
tlieir  oath — but  must  be  understood,  sj^eaking  or  writing, 
with  some  abatement.  They  seldom  wait  to  matm-e  a 
proposition,  but  e'en  bring  it  to  market  in  the  green  ear. 
They  delight  to  impart  their  defective  discoveries  as  they 
arise,  without  waiting  for  theu-  full  development.  They 
are  no  systematizers,  and  would  but  err  more  by  attempting 
it.  Their  minds,  as  I  said  before,  are  suggestive  merely. 
The  ])rain  of  a  true  Caledonian  (if  I  am  not  mistaken)  is 
constituted  upon  quite  a  different  plan.     His  Mincn-va  is 

to  the  rack  could  give  no  other  reason  for  the  deed  but  an  inveterate 
antipathy  which  he  had  taken  to  the  first  sight  of  the  king. 

The  cause  which  to  that  act  compell'd  him 

Was,  he  ne'er  loved  him  since  he  first  beheld  him. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  79 

Lorn  in  panojily.  You  are  never  admitted  to  see  his 
ideas  in  tlieii-  growth — if,  indeed,  they  do  grow,  and  are 
not  rather  put  together  upon  principles  of  clock-work. 
You  never  catcli  his  mind  in  an  undress.  He  never 
hints  or  suggests  anything,  but  imlades  his  stock  of  ideas 
in  perfect  order  and  completeness.  He  brings  his  total 
wealth  into  company,  and  gravely  unpacks  it.  His 
riches  are  always  about  him.  He  never  stoops  to  catch 
a  glittering  something  in  yom-  presence  to  share  it  yvith 
you,  before  he  quite  knows  whether  it  be  true  touch  or 
not.  You  cannot  cry  kalves  to  anything  that  he  finds. 
He  does  not  find,  but  bring.  You  never  witness  his  first 
apprehension  of  a  thing.  His  understanding  is  always  at 
its  meridian — you  never  see  the  fii-st  dawn,  the  early 
streaks. — He  has  no  falterings  of  self-suspicion.  Svu-- 
mises,  guesses,  misgivings,  half-intuitions,  semi-conscious- 
nesses, partial  illmninations,  dim  instincts,  embryo  con- 
ceptions, have  no  place  in  his  brain  or  vocabulary.  The 
twilight  of  dubiety  never  falls  upon  him.  Is  he  orthodox 
— he  has  no  doubts.  Is  he  an  infidel — he  has  none 
either.  Between  the  affirmative  and  the  negative  there 
is  no  border-land  ^vith  him.  You  cannot  hover  with  him 
upon  the  confines  of  truth,  or  wander  in  the  maze  of  a 
proljable  argument.  He  always  keeps  the  path.  You 
cannot  make  excursions  with  him — for  he  sets  you  right. 
His  taste  never  fluctuates.  His  morality  never  abates. 
He  cannot  compromise,  or  understand  middle  actions. 
There  can  be  but  a  right  and  a  wi-ong.  His  conversation 
is  as  a  book.  His  affirmations  have  the  sanctity  of  an 
oath.  You  must  speak  upon  the  square  vnth  him.  He 
stops  a  metaphor  like  a  suspected  person  in  an  enemy's 
coimtry.  "  A  healthy  book  ! " — said  one  of  his  country- 
men to  me,  who  liad  ventm-ed  to  give  that  appellation  to 
John  Bimcle, — "  Did  I  catch  rightly  what  you  said  ?  I 
have  heard  of  a  man  in  health,  and  of  a  healthy  state  of 
body,  but  I  do  not  see  how  that  epithet  can  be  properly 
applied  to  a  book."  Above  all,  you  nmst  beware  of  in- 
direct   expressions    before    a    Caledonian.     Clap    an    ex- 


80  TT[E  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

tiiif^niislior  tipon  your  irony,  if  you  are  unhappily  blest 
with  a  veiu  of  it.  Remember  you  are  upon  your  oath. 
I  have  a  print  of  a  graceful  female  after  Leonardo  da 
Vinci,  which  I  was  showing  off  to  Mr.  *  *  *  *  After 
he  had  examined  it  minutely,  I  veutm-ed  to  ask  him  how 
he  liked  my  beauty  (a  foolish  name  it  goes  by  among 
my  friends) — when  he  very  gravely  assured  me,  that  "  he 
h;ul  considerable  respect  for  my  character  and  talents" 
(so  he  was  pleased  to  say),  "  but  had  not  given  himself 
much  thought  aliout  the  degree  of  my  personal  i^rc- 
tensions."  The  misconception  staggered  me,  but  did  not 
seem  much  to  disconcert  him. — Persons  of  this  nation  are 
particularly  fond  of  affirming  a  truth  —  which  nobody 
doubts.  They  do  not  so  properly  affirm,  as  annunciate  it. 
They  do  indeed  appear  to  have  such  a  love  of  truth  (;is  if, 
like  virtue,  it  were  valual)le  for  itself)  that  all  truth 
becomes  equally  valual)Ie,  whether  the  proposition  that 
contains  it  be  new  or  old,  disputed,  or  such  as  is  impossible 
to  become  a  subject  of  disputation.  I  was  present  not 
long  since  at  a  party  of  North  Britons,  where  a  son  of 
Burns  was  expected ;  and  happened  to  drop  a  silly  ex- 
pression (in  my  South  British  way),  that  I  wished  it 
were  the  father  instead  of  the  son — when  four  of  them 
started  up  at  once  to  inform  me,  that  "  that  was  im- 
])Ossiblc,  because  he  was  dead."  An  impracticable  wish, 
it  seems,  was  more  than  they  could  conceive.  Swift  has 
hit  off  this  part  of  their  character,  namely  their  love  of 
truth,  in  his  lilting  way,  but  with  an  illiberality  tliat 
necessarily  confines  the  passage   to   the  margin.  ^      Tlie 

1  There  are  some  people  wlio  tliiiik  they  sufficieiitly  acquit 
themselves,  and  entertain  their  company,  with  relating  facts  of  no 
consequence,  not  at  all  out  of  the  road  of  such  common  incidents 
as  happen  every  day  ;  and  this  I  have  observed  more  frequently 
among  the  Scots  than  any  other  nation,  who  are  very  caicful  not 
to  omit  the  minutest  circumstances  of  time  or  place  ;  whiili  kind 
of  discourse,  if  it  were  not  a  little  relieved  by  the  uncouth  terms 
and  ])hrases,  as  well  as  accent  and  gesture,  peculiar  to  tliat  country, 
Avould  be  hardly  tolerable. — Ifivt.t  (mimrih  <tii  JCfsai/  mi,  Cvn.- 
versation. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  81 

tediousuess  of  these  people  is  certainly  provokinj;-.  I 
wonder  if  they  ever  tire  one  another  ! — In  my  early  life  I 
had  a  passionate  fondness  for  the  poetry  of  Burns.  I 
have  sometimes  foolishly  hoped  to  ingratiate  myself  with 
his  countrymen  by  expressing  it.  But  I  have  always 
fomid  that  a  true  Scot  resents  your  admiration  of  his 
compatriot  even  more  than  he  would  yoiu*  contempt  of 
him.  The  latter  he  imputes  to  yom-  "  imperfect  acquaint- 
ance with  many  of  the  w^ords  which  he  uses ; "  aud  the 
same  objection  makes  it  a  presumption  in  you  to  suppose 
that  you  can  admire  him. — Thomson  they  seem  to  have 
forgotten.  Smollett  they  have  neither  forgotten  nor 
forgiven,  for  his  delineation  of  Rory  and  his  companion, 
ujion  their  fii-st  introduction  to  om-  metropolis. — Speak  of 
Smollett  as  a  great  genius,  and  they  will  retort  upon 
you  Hume's  History  compared  with  his  Continuation  of 
it.  What  if  the  historian  had  continued  Humphrey 
Clinker? 

I  have,  in  the  abstract,  no  disrespect  for  Jews.  They 
are  a  piece  of  stubborn  anticjuity,  compared  with  which 
Stonehenge  is  in  its  nonage.  They  date  beyond  the 
pyramids.  But  I  should  not  care  to  be  in  habits  of 
familiar  intercoiu:se  with  any  of  that  nation.  I  confess 
that  I  have  not  the  nerves  to  enter  their  synagogues. 
Old  prejudices  cling  about  me.  I  cannot  shake  off  the 
story  of  Hugh  of  Lincoln.  Centm-ies  of  injiuy,  con- 
tempt, and  hate,  on  the  one  side, — of  cloaked  revenge, 
dissimulation,  and  hate,  on  the  other,  lietween  our  aud 
their  fathers,  must  and  ought  to  affect  the  blood  of  the 
children.  I  cannot  believe  it  can  nm  clear  and  kindly 
yet ;  or  that  a  few  fine  words,  such  as  candour,  liberality, 
the  light  of  a  nineteenth  centmy,  can  close  up  the  breaches 
of  so  deadly  a  disiuuon.  A  Hebrew  is  nowhere  congenial 
to  me.  He  is  least  distasteful  on  'Change — for  the  mer- 
cantile spirit  levels  all  distinctions,  as  all  are  beauties  in 
the  dark.  I  boldly  confess  that  I  do  not  relish  the 
approximation  of  Jew  and  Christian,  which  has  become 
so  fashionable.  The  reciprocal  endearments  have,  to  me, 
G 


82  THE  ESSAYS  ()F  EIJA. 

sniiictliiii.LC  liypiK  ritic;il  ;iiiil  uiiiinliiriil  in  tliciii.  I  do  not 
like  ti>  si'e  tlu'  (.'liurcli  and  Synagugiu^  kissin.i;-  and  nm- 
<i;t'eiii,^-  in  awkward  pnstnri's  of  an  affected  civility.  If 
tlwy  are  converted,  wliy  do  they  not  (;oinc  over  to  us 
altogether?  Wliy  keep  ui>  a  form  of  separation,  when 
the  life  of  it  is  fled?  If  tliey  can  sit  with  us  at  table, 
why  do  they  keck  at  our  cookery  %  I  do  not  iuid(!rstand 
these  half  convertites.  Jews  christianizing — Christians 
judaizing — puzzle  me.  I  like  fish  or  flesh.  A  nuxlerate 
Jew  is  a  more  confounding  piece  of  anomaly  tlian  a  wet 
Quaker.  The  spirit  of  the  synagogue  is  essentially  separa- 
tive.    B ■  would  have  been  more  in  keeping  if  he  had 

abideil  l»y  tlie  faith  of  his  foreftithers.  There  is  a  fine 
scorn  ill  his  face,  which  nature  meant  to  be  of Chris- 
tians.— The  Hebrew  spirit  is  strong  in  him,  in  spite  of 
his  proselytism.  He  cannot  conquer  the  Shiblioleth. 
How  it  breaks  out,  when  he  sings,  "The  Children  of 
Israel  passed  through  the  Red  Sea!"  The  auditors,  for 
the  moment,  are  as  Egyi^tians  to  him,  and  he  rides  over 
our    necks   in    triumph.      There  is   no    mistaking   him. 

B has  a  strong  expression  of  sense  in  his  countenance, 

and  it  is  confirmed  by  his '  singing.  The  foundation  of 
his  vocal  excellence  is  sense.  He  sings  with  understand- 
ing, as  Kemble  delivered  dialogue.  He  would  sing  the 
Conmiandments,  and  give  an  appropriate  character  to 
each  prohibition.  His  nation,  in  general,  have  not  over- 
sensible  covmtenances.  How  should  they?  —  but  you 
seldom  see  a  silly  expression  among  thcm.^ — Gain,  and 
the  piu'suit  of  gain,  sharpen  a  man's  visage.  I  never 
heard  of  an  idiot  lieing  born  among  them. — Some  admire 
the  Jewish  female-physiogniomy.  I  admire  it — but  with 
trembling.     Jael  had  those  full  dark  inscrutable  eyes. 

In  the  Negro  countenance  you  will  often  meet  with 
strong  traits  of  benignity.  I  have  felt  yearnings  of 
tenderness  towards  some  of  these  faces — or  rather  masks 
— that  have  looked  out  kindly  ui)0u  one  in  casual  en- 
counters in  the  streets  and  highways.  I  love  what  Fuller 
beautifully  calls— these  "images  of  God  cut  in  ebony." 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  83 

But  I  should  uot  like  to  tuisociatc  with  tlioui,  to  share 
uiy  meals  and  my  good  nights  with  them — because  they 
are  black. 

I  love  Quaker  ways,  and  Quaker  worship.  I  venerate 
the  Quaker  j^rinciples.  It  docs  me  good  for  the  rest  of 
the  day  when  I  meet  any  of  their  people  in  my  path. 
When  I  am  ruffled  or  distm"bed  by  any  occurrence,  the 
sight,  or  quiet  voice  of  a  Quaker,  acts  upon  me  as  a 
ventilator,  lightening  tlie  air,  and  taking  ott'  a  load  from 
the  bosom.  But  I  cannot  like  the  Quakers  (as  Dcsde- 
mona  would  say)  "  to  live  with  them."  I  am  all  over 
sophisticated  —  with  humoiu's,  fancies,  craving  hom-ly 
sympathy.  I  must  have  books,  pictm'cs,  theatres,  chit- 
chat, scandal,  jokes,  ambiguities,  and  a  thousand  whim- 
whams,  which  their  simpler  taste  can  do  without.  I 
should  starve  at  their  primitive  banquet.  My  appetites 
are  too  high  for  the  salads  which  (according  to  Evelyn) 
Eve  dressed  for  the  angel ;  my  gusto  too  excited 

To  sit  a  guest  with  Dauiel  at  liis  pulse. 

Tlic  indirect  answers  which  Quakers  are  often  foimd  to 
retm-n  to  a  question  put  to  them  may  be  explained,  I 
think,  wdthout  the  vulgar  assimiption,  that  they  are  more 
given  to  evasion  and  equivocating  than  other  people. 
They  naturally  look  to  their  words  more  carefully,  and 
are  more  cautious  of  committing  themselves.  They  have 
a  peculiar  character  to  kee])  up  on  this  head.  They  stand 
in  a  manner  upon  their  veracity.  A  Quaker  is  by  law 
exempted  from  taking  an  oath.  The  custom  of  resorting 
to  an  oath  in  extreme  cases,  sanctified  as  it  is  by  all 
religious  antiquity,  is  apt  (it  must  be  confessed)  to  intro- 
duce into  the  laxer  sort  of  minds  the  notion  of  two  kinds 
of  truth — the  one  applicable  to  the  solemn  affairs  of 
justice,  and  the  other  to  the  common  proceedings  of  daily 
intercoiu-se.  As  truth  liound  upon  the  conscience  by  an 
oath  can  be  but  truth,  so  in  the  common  affirmations  of 
the  shop  and  the  market-place  a  latitude  is  expected  and 
conceded  upon  questions  wanting  this  solemn  covenant. 


84  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Something  less  than  truth  satisfies.  It  is  coinmoii  to 
hear  a  person  say,  "  You  do  not  expect  me  to  speak  as  if 
I  were  upon  my  oath."  Hence  a  great  deal  of  incorrect- 
ness and  inadvertency,  short  of  falsehood,  creeps  into 
ordinary  conversation ;  and  a  kind  of  secondary  or  laic- 
truth  is  tolerated,  where  clergy-truth — oath-truth,  by  the 
nature  of  the  circumstances,  is  not  required.  A  Quaker 
knows  none  of  this  distinction.  His  simple  affirniiation 
being  received  i\\)on  the  most  sacred  occasions,  without 
any  further  test,  stamps  a  value  upon  the  words  which 
he  is  to  use  upon  the  most  indifierent  topics  of  life.  He 
looks  to  them,  natm'ally,  with  more  severity.  You  can 
have  of  him  no  more  than  his  word.  He  knows,  if  he  is 
caught  tripping  in  a  casual  expression,  he  forfeits,  for 
himself  at  least,  his  claim  to  the  invidious  exemption. 
He  knoM^s  that  his  syllables  are  weighed — and  how  far 
a  consciousness  of  this  particular  watchfulness,  exerted 
against  a  person,  has  a  tendency  to  produce  indirect 
answers,  and  a  diverting  of  the  question  by  honest  means, 
might  be  illustrated,  and  the  practice  justified  by  a  more 
sacred  example  than  is  proper  to  be  adduced  upon  this 
occasion.  The  admirable  presence  of  mind,  which  is 
notorious  in  Quakers  ujion  all  contingencies,  might  be 
traced  to  this  imposed  self- watchfulness — if  it  did  not 
seem  rather  an  humble  and  secular  scion  of  that  old  stock 
of  religious  constancy,  which  never  bent  or  faltered,  in 
the  Primitive  Friends,  or  gave  way  to  the  winds  of  perse- 
cution, to  the  violence  of  judge  or  accuser,  imder  trials 
and  racking  examinations.  "  You  will  never  be  the  wiser, 
if  I  sit  here  answering  your  questions  till  midnight,"  said 
one  of  those  upright  Justicers  to  Pcnn,  who  had  been 
putting  law-cases  with  a  puzzling  subtlety.  "  Thereafter 
as  the  answers  may  be,"  retorted  the  Quaker.  The 
astonishing  composure  of  this  people  is  sometimes  ludi- 
crously displayed  in  lighter  instances. — I  was  travelling 
in  a  stage-coach  with  three  male  Quakers,  buttoned  up 
in  the  straitest  nonconformity  of  their  sect.  We  stopped 
to  bait  at  Andovcr,  where  a  meal,  partly  tea  api)avatus. 


WITCHES,   AND  OTHER   NIGHT  FEAKS.  85 

partly  supi^er,  was  set  before  us.  ]\Iy  friends  confined 
themselves  to  the  tea-tal)le.  I  in  my  way  took  supper. 
When  the  landlady  brought  in  the  bill,  the  eldest  of  my 
companions  discovered  that  she  had  charged  for  both  meals. 
This  was  resisted.  Mine  hostess  was  very  clamorous  and 
positive.  Some  mild  arguments  were  used  on  the  part  of 
the  Quakers,  for  which  the  heated  mind  of  the  good  lady 
seemed  by  no  means  a  fit  recipient.  The  guard  came  in 
with  his  usual  peremptory  notice.  The  Quakers  pulled 
out  their  money  and  formally  tendered  it — so  much  for 
tea — I,  in  humble  imitation,  tendering  mine — for  the 
supper  which  I  had  taken.  She  would  not  relax  in  her 
demand.  So  they  all  three  quietly  put  up  their  silver, 
as  did  myself,  ancl  marched  out  of  the  room,  the  eldest 
and  gi-avest  going  first,  with  myself  closing  up  the  reai", 
who  thought  I  could  not  do  better  than  follow  the  ex- 
ample of  such  grave  and  warrantable  personages.  We 
got  in.  The  steps  went  up.  The  coach  drove  ofl:'.  The 
murmurs  of  mine  hostess,  not  very  indistinctly  or  ambigu- 
ously pronomiced,  became  after  a  time  inaudible — and 
now  my  conscience,  which  the  whimsical  scene  had  for 
a  while  suspended,  beginniug  to  give  some  twitches,  I 
waited,  in  the  hope  that  some  justification  would  be 
oflfered  by  these  serious  persons  for  the  seeming  injustice 
of  their  conduct.  To  my  great  surprise  not  a  syllable 
was  dropped  on  the  subject.  They  sat  as  mute  as  at  a 
meeting.  At  length  the  eldest  of  them  broke  silence,  by 
inc^uiriug  of  his  next  neighbom-,  "  Hast  thee  heai'd  how 
indigos  go  at  the  India  House  V  and  the  cpiestion  operated 
as  a  soporific  on  my  moral  feeling  as  far  as  Exeter. 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS. 

We  are  too  hasty  when  we  set  down  our  ancestors  in  the 
gross  for  fools,  for  tlie  monstrous  inconsistencies  (as  they 
seem  to  us)  involved  in  their  creed  of  witchcraft.     In  the 


86  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

relations  of  tliis  visible  world  vrc  find  them  to  have  been 
as  rational,  and  slirewd  to  detect  an  historic  anomaly,  as 
oiu'selves.  But  when  once  the  invisible  world  was  sup- 
posed to  be  open,  and  the  lawless  agency  of  bad  spirits 
assumed,  what  measures  of  probability,  of  decency,  of  fit- 
ness, or  proj^ortion — of  that  which  distinguishes  the  likely 
from  the  palpable  absiu-d — could  they  have  to  giiide  them 
in  the  rcyection  or  admission  of  any  particular  testi- 
mony ? — That  maidens  pined  away,  wasting  inwardly  as 
theii-  waxen  images  consumed  before  a  fire — that  corn 
was  lodged,  and  cattle  lamed — that  whirlwinds  ui)tore  in 
diabolic  revelry  the  oaks  of  th(!  forest — or  that  sjiits  and 
kettles  only  danced  a  fearful-innocent  vagary  about  some 
rustic's  kitchen  when  no  wind  was  stirring — wei'e  all 
equally  proba])le  wliere  no  huv  of  agency  was  understood. 
That  the  prince  of  the  powers  of  darkn(!ss,  passing  by  the 
flower  and  pomp  of  the  earth,  should  lay  })reposterons 
siege  to  the  weak  fantasy  of  indigent  eld — has  neither 
likelihood  nor  unlikelihood  a  2>riori  to  ns,  who  have  no 
measm-e  to  guess  at  his  policy,  or  standard  to  estimate 
what  rate  those  anile  souls  may  fetch  in  the  devil's  market. 
Nor,  when  the  racked  are  expressly  symbolised  by  a  goat, 
was  it  to  be  wondered  at  so  much,  that  he  should  come 
sometimes  in  that  body,  and  assert  his  metaphor. — That 
tlie  intercom'se  was  oi:)ened  at  all  between  both  worlds 
w;xs  perhaps  the  mistake — l;»ut  that  once  assumed,  I  see 
no  reason  for  disbelieving  one  attested  story  of  this  nature 
more  than  another  on  the  score  of  absurdity.  There  is  no 
law  to  judge  of  the  lawless,  or  canon  l)y  wliicli  a  dream 
may  l)e  criticised. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  I  could  not  have  existed 
in  the  days  of  received  witchcraft ;  that  I  could  not  have 
slept  in  a  village  where  one  of  those  reputed  hags  dwelt. 
Our  ancestors  were  bolder  or  more  obtuse.  Amidst  the 
universal  belief  tliat  these  wretches  were  in  league  with 
the  autlior  of  all  evil,  holding  liell  trilnitary  to  their  mut- 
tering, no  simple  justice  of  the  peace  seems  to  liave 
scrupled  issuing,  or  silly  headborough  serving,  a  warrant 


WITCHES,   AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  87 

upon  them — as  if  they  should  sulijifena  Satan  ! — Prospero 
in  his  boat,  with  his  liooks  and  wand  about  him,  suffers 
himself  to  be  conveyed  away  at  the  mercy  of  his  enemies 
to  an  imknowu  island.  He  might  have  raised  a  storm  or 
two,  w^e  think,  on  the  passage.  His  acquiescence  is  in 
exact  analogy  to  the  non-resistance  of  witches  to  the  con- 
stituted powers. — What  stops  the  Fiend  in  Spenser  from 
tearing  Guyon  to  pieces — or  who  had  made  it  a  condition 
of  his  prey  that  Guyon  must  take  assay  of  the  glorious 
Ijait — we  have  no  guess.  We  do  not  know  the  laws  of 
that  country. 

From  my  childlKiod  I  was  extremely  inquisitive  about 
witches  and  witch-stories.  My  maid,  and  more  legendary 
aunt,  supplied  me  with  good  store.  But  I  shall  mention 
the  accident  which  directed  my  ciuiosity  originally  into 
this  channel.  In  my  father's  liook-closet  the  hi.story  of 
the  Bible  by  Stackhouse  occupied  a  distinguished  station. 
The  pictiu-es  with  which  it  abounds — one  of  the  ark,  in 
particular,  and  another  of  Solomon's  temple,  delineated 
with  all  the  fidelity  of  ocular  admeasurement,  as  if  the 
artist  had  been  upon  the  spot — attracted  my  childish 
attention.  There  was  a  pictm-e,  too,  of  the  Witch  raising 
up  Samuel,  which  I  wish  that  I  had  never  seen.  We 
shall  come  to  that  hereafter.  Stackhouse  is  in  two  huge 
tomes ;  and  there  was  a  pleasm-e  in  removing  folios  of 
that  magnitude,  which,  -Rath  infinite  straining,  was  as 
much  as  I  coidd  manage,  from  the  situation  Avliich  they 
occupied  upon  an  ujjper  shelf.  I  have  not  met  with  the 
work  from  that  time  to  tliis,  but  I  remember  it  consisted 
of  Old  Testament  stories,  orderly  set  down,  with  the 
objection  appended  to  each  story,  and  the  solution  of 
the  objection  regularly  tacked  to  that.  The  ohjeciion 
was  a  summary  of  whatever  difliculties  had  been  opposed 
to  the  credibility  of  the  histoiy  by  the  slirewdness 
of  ancient  or  modern  infidelity,  drawn  up  with  an 
almost  complimentary  excess  of  candour.  The  solution 
was  brief,  modest,  and  satisfactoiy.  The  bane  and 
antidote  were  both  before  you.     To  doul)ts  so  jtut,  and  so 


88  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

quashed,  there  seemed  to  be  an  end  for  ever.  The 
dragon  lay  dead,  for  the  foot  of  the  veriest  babe  to 
trample  on.  But — like  as  was  rather  feared  than  real- 
ized from  that  slain  monster  in  Spenser — from  the  womb 
of  those  crushed  errors  young  dragonets  would  creep, 
exceeding  the  prowess  of  so  tender  a  Saint  George  as 
myself  to  vanquish.  The  habit  of  expecting  objections 
to  every  passage  set  me  upon  starting  more  objections, 
for  the  glory  of  finding  a  solution  of  my  own  for  them. 
I  became  staggered  and  perjilexed,  a  sceptic  in  long-coats. 
The  pretty  Bible  stories  which  I  had  read,  or  heard  read 
in  church,  lost  their  purity  and  sincerity  of  impression, 
and  were  turned  into  so  many  historic  or  chronologic 
theses  to  be  defended  against  whatever  impugners.  I 
was  not  to  disbelieve  them,  Imt — the  next  thing  to  that 
— I  was  to  be  quite  sm-e  that  some  one  or  other  would 
or  had  disljelieved  them.  Next  to  making  a  child  an 
infidel  is  the  letting  him  know  that  there  are  infidels  at 
all.  Credulity  is  the  man's  weakness,  but  the  child's 
strength.  0,  how  ugly  sound  scriptural  doubts  from  the 
mouth  of  a  babe  and  a  suckling ! — I  should  have  lost 
myself  in  these  mazes,  and  have  pined  away,  I  think, 
with  such  unfit  sustenance  as  these  husks  aftbrded,  but 
for  a  fortunate  piece  of  ill-fortune  which  aljout  this  time 
befell  me.  Timiing  over  the  i)icture  of  the  ark  with  too 
much  haste,  I  unliappily  made  a  breach  in  its  ingenious 
fabric — driving  my  inconsiderate  fingers  right  tlirough 
the  two  larger  quadrupeds,  the  elephant  and  the  camel, 
that  stare  (as  well  they  might)  out  of  the  two  last 
windows  next  the  steerage  in  that  unique  piece  of  naval 
architecture.  Stackhouse  was  henceforth  locked  up,  and 
became  an  interdicted  treasure.  With  the  book,  the 
objections  and  solutions  gradually  cleared  out  of  my  head, 
and  have  seldom  returned  since  in  any  force  to  trouble 
me.  But  there  was  one  impression  which  I  had  imbibed 
from  Stackhouse  wliich  no  lock  or  bar  could  shut  out, 
and  wliich  was  destined  to  try  my  childish  nerves  rather 
more  seriously. — That  detestable  picture  ! 


^^'1TCHES,   AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  89 

I  was  dreadfully  alive  to  nervous  terrors.  The  uight- 
time,  solitude,  and  the  dark,  were  my  hell.  The  suffer- 
ings I  endiu'ed  in  this  nature  would  justify  the  exjn'ession. 
I  never  laid  my  head  on  my  jnllow,  I  suppose,  from  the 
fom-th  to  the  seventh  or  eighth  year  of  my  life — so  flxr 
as  memory  senses  in  things  so  long  ago — mthout  an 
assurance,  which  realized  its  own  prophecy,  of  seeing 
some  fiightful  spectre.  Be  old  Stackhouse  then  acquitted 
in  part,  if  I  say,  that  to  this  picture  of  the  Witch  raising 
up  Samuel — (0  that  old  man  covered  with  a  mantle  !)^ — 
I  owe — not  my  midnight  terrors,  the  hell  of  my  infancy 
— but  the  shape  and  manner  of  their  Ansitation.  It  was 
he  who  dressed  up  for  me  a  hag  that  nightly  sate  njjon 
my  pillow— a  sure  bedfellow,  when  my  aunt  or  my  maid 
was  far  from  me.  All  day  long,  Avhile  the  book  was 
permitted  me,  I  dreamed  waking  over  his  delineation, 
and  at  night  (if  I  may  use  so  bold  an  expression)  awoke 
into  sleep,  and  found  the  vision  true.  I  dm'st  not,  even 
in  the  day-light,  once  enter  the  chamber  where  I  slept, 
without  my  face  turned  to  the  window,  aversely  from  the 
bed  Avhere  my  -wntch-ridden  pillow  was.  Parents  do  not 
know  what  they  do  when  they  leave  tender  babes  alone 
to  go  to  sleep  in  the  dark.  The  feeling  about  for  a 
friendly  arm  — the  hoping  for  a  familiar  voice- — Avhen 
they  wake  screaming — and  find  none  to  soothe  them — 
what  a  terrible  shaking  it  is  to  their  poor  nerves  !  The 
keeping  them  u})  till  midnight,  through  candle-light  and 
the  unwholesome  hours,  as  they  are  called, — would,  I 
am  satisfied,  in  a  medical  point  of  view,  prove  the  better 
caution.— That  detestable  picture,  as  I  have  said,  gave 
the  fashion  to  my  dreams — if  dreams  they  were — for  the 
scene  of  them  was  invariably  the  room  in  which  I  lay. 
Had  I  never  met  with  the  picture,  the  fears  would  have 
come  self-pictured  in  some  shape  or  other^ 

Headless  bear,  black  man,  or  ape — 

but,  as  it  was,  my  imaginations  took  that  form. — It  is  not 
book,  or  picture,  or  the  stories  of  foolish  servants,  which 


90  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ETJA. 

create  these  terrors  in  cliildreii.  They  can  at  most  but 
give  them  a  direction.  Dear  little  T.  H.,  who  of  all 
childreu  has  been  brought  up  with  the  most  scrupulous 
exclusion  of  every  taint  of  superstition — who  was  never 
allowed  to  hear  of  goblin  or  apparition,  or  scarcely  to  be 
told  of  bad  men,  or  to  read  or  hear  of  any  distressing  story 
■ — finds  all  this  world  of  fear,  from  which  he  has  been  so 
rigidly  excluded  ah  extra,  in  his  own  "  thick-coming 
fancies;"  and  from  his  little  midnight  pillow,  this  nurse- 
child  of  o])timism  will  start  at  shapes,  unborrowed  of 
tradition,  in  sweats  to  which  the  reveries  of  the  cell- 
damned  nuirderer  arc  tran(pnllity. 

Gorgons,  and  Hydras,  and  Chima?ras  dire — stories  of 
Ceheno  and  the  Harjiies — may  reproduce  themselves  in 
the  brain  of  superstition — but  they  were  there  before. 
They  are  transcrijits,  tyjies — the  archetyjjes  are  in  us, 
and  eternal.  How  else  should  the  recital  of  that,  which 
we  know  in  a  waking  sense  to  be  fidse,  come  to  affect  us 
at  alH— or 

Names,  whose  sense  we  see  not, 

Fray  us  with  tilings  that  be  not  ? 

Is  it  that  we  naturally  conceive  terror  from  such  objects, 
considered  in  their  capacity  of  being  alile  to  inflict  upon 
us  bodily  injury? — 0,  least  of  all  !  Th(>se  terrors  are  of 
older  standing.  They  date  beyond  body — or,  without 
the  body,  they  would  have  been  the  same.  All  the 
cruel,  tormenting,  defined  devils  in  Dante  —  tearing, 
mangling,  choking,  stifling,  scorching  demons — are  they 
one  half  so  fearful  to  the  spirit  of  a  man,  as  the  simple 
idea  of  a  spirit  unembodied  following  him — 

Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 
Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 
And  having  once  tnrnM  round,  walks  on 
And  turns  no  more  his  head  ; 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread. ^ 

That  tlu^  kind  of  fear  here  treated  of  is  purely  s])ii-itual 

^   Mr.  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner. 


WITCHES,   AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  91 

— that  it  is  strong  in  proportion  as  it  is  objectless  upon 
earth — that  it  predominates  in  the  pei-iod  of  sinless 
infancy — are  difficulties,  the  solution  of  which  might 
afford  some  probable  insight  i)ito  oiu"  ante-mundane  con- 
dition, and  a  peep  at  least  into  the  shadowland  of  prc- 
existeuce. 

My  night  foucics  have  long  ceased  to  be  afflictive.  I 
confess  an  occasional  nightmare ;  but  I  do  not,  as  in 
early  youth,  keep  a  stud  of  them.  Fiendish  foces,  with 
the  extingiiished  taper,  will  come  and  look  at  me ;  but  I 
know  them  for  mockeries,  even  while  I  cannot  ehule 
their  presence,  and  I  fight  and  gi'apple  with  them.  For 
the  credit  of  my  imagination,  I  am  almost  ashamed  to 
say  how  tame  and  prosaic,  my  dreams  are  growTi.  They 
are  never  romantic,  seldom  e\'en  nu'al.  They  are  of 
architectm^e  and  of  buildings — cities  abroad,  which  I 
have  never  seen  and  hardly  have  hoped  to  see.  I  have 
traveled,  for  the  seeming  length  of  a  natural  day,  Rome, 
Amsterdam,  Paris,  Lisbon  —  their  chiux-hes,  ])alaces, 
squares,  market-places,  shops,  suburbs,  ruins,  with  an 
inexpressible  sense  of  delight — a  map-like  distinctness  of 
trace,  and  a  day-light  vividness  of  vision,  that  was  all 
but  being  awake. — I  have  formerly  travelled  among  the 
Westmoreland  fells — my  highest  Alps, — but  they  are 
objects  too  mighty  for  the  grasp  of  my  dreaming  recogni- 
tion ;  aiul  I  have  again  and  again  awoke  with  ineffectual 
stniggles  of  the  inner  eye,  to  make  out  a  shape,  in  any 
way  whatever,  of  HelvelljTi.  Methought  I  wa.s  in  that 
coimtry,  but  the  mountains  were  gone.  The  poverty  of 
my  dreams  mortifies  me.  There  is  Coleridge,  at  his 
will  can  conjiu-e  \\\)  icy  domes,  and  pleasm'e-houses  for 
Kubla  Khan,  and  Aliyssinian  maids,  and  songs  of  Al)ara, 
and  caverns. 

Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  runs, 

to  solace  his  night  solitudes — when  I  cannot  muster  a 
fiddle.  Barry  Coniwall  has  his  tritons  and  his  nereids 
gamboling  before  him  in  nocturnal  visions,  and  proclaim- 


92  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

iiig  sons  born  to  Neptune — when  my  stretch  of  imagina- 
tive activity  can  hardly,  in  the  night  season,  raise  up  the 
ghost  of  a  fish-wife.  To  set  my  failures  in  somewhat  a 
mortifying  light — it  was  after  reading  the  noble  Dream 
of  this  poet,  that  my  fancy  ran  strong  upon  these  marine 
spectra ;  and  the  poor  i)lastic  power,  such  as  it  is,  within 
me  set  to  work  to  humour  my  folly  in  a  sort  of  dream 
that  very  night.  Methouglit  I  was  upon  the  ocean 
billows  at  some  sea  nuptials,  riding  and  mounted  high, 
with  the  customary  train  sounding  their  conchs  before 
me,  (I  myself,  you  may  be  sure,  the  leadhui  god),  and 
jollily  we  went  careering  over  the  main,  till  just  where 
Ino  Leucothea  should  have  greeted  me  (I  think  it  was 
luo)  with  a  white  embrace,  the  billows  gradually  subsid- 
ing, fell  from  a  sea  roughness  to  a  sea  calm,  and  thence 
to  a  river  motion,  and  that  river  (as  happens  in  the 
fjxmiliarization  of  dreams)  was  no  other  than  the  gentle 
Thames,  which  landed  me  in  the  wafture  of  a  placid 
wave  or  two,  alone,  safe  and  inglorious,  somewhere  at 
the  foot  of  Lamlieth  palace. 

The  degree  of  the  soul's  creativeness  in  sleep  might 
furnish  no  whimsical  criterion  of  the  quantum  of  poetical 
faculty  resideiut  in  the  same  soul  waking.  An  old 
gentleman,  a  friend  of  mine,  and  a  humorist,  used  to 
carry  this  notion  so  far,  that  when  he  saw  any  stripling 
of  his  acquaintance  ambitious  of  becoming  a  poet,  his 
first  question  would  be, — "Young  man,  Avhat  sort  of 
dreams  have  you?"  I  have  so  much  fiiith  in  my  old 
friend's  theory,  that  when  I  feel  that  idle  vein  returning 
upon  me,  I  presently  subside  into  my  proper  element  of 
2)rose,  remembering  those  eluding  uereids,  and  that 
inauspicious  inland  landing. 


valentine's  day.  93 


VALENTINE'S  DAY. 


Hail  to  thy  retimiiiig  festival,  old  Bishop  Valentine  ! 
Great  is  thy  name  in  the  nil  trie,  thou  venerable  Arch- 
iiamen  of  Hymen !  Immortal  Go-between ;  who  and 
what  manner  of  person  art  thou  1  Ai't  thou  but  a  name, 
typifjing  the  restless  principle  which  impels  poor  humans 
to  seek  perfection  in  union  ?  or  wert  thou  indeed  a  mortal 
prelate,  mth  thy  tippet  and  thy  rochet,  thy  apron  on, 
and  decent  la-mi  sleeves  ?  INIysterious  personage  !  Like 
unto  thee,  assuredly,  there  is  no  other  mitred  father  in  the 
calendar ;  not  Jerome,  nor  Ambrose,  nor  Cyi'il ;  nor  the 
consigner  of  undipt  infants  to  etenial  torments,  Austin, 
whom  all  mothers  hate ;  nor  he  who  hated  all  mothers, 
Origen  ;  nor  Bishop  Bidl,  nor  Archbishop  Parker,  nor 
"Wliitgift.  Thou  comest  attended  with  thousands  and 
ten  thousands  of  little  Loves,  and  the  air  is 

Brush'd  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  wings. 

Singing  Cupids  are  thy  choristers  and  thy  precentors ;  and 
instead  of  the  crosier,  the  mystical  arrow  is  borne  before 
thee. 

In  other  words,  this  is  the  day  on  which  those  charm- 
ing little  missives,  ycleped  Valentines,  cross  and  inter- 
cross each  other  at  every  street  and  turning.  The  weary 
and  all  forspent  twopenny  postman  sinks  beneath  a  load 
of  delicate  embarrassments,  not  his  own.  It  is  scarcely 
credible  to  what  an  extent  this  ephemeral  com-tship  is 
carried  on  in  this  loving  town,  to  the  great  enrichment  of 
portere,  and  detriment  of  knockers  and  bell- wires.  In  these 
little  visual  interpretations,  no  emblem  is  so  common  as 
the  heart, — that  little  three-cornered  exponent  of  all  our 
hopes  and  fears, — the  bestuck  and  bleeding  heart ;  it  is 
twisted  and  tortured  into  more  allegories  and  affectations 
than  an  o})era  hat.  What  authority  we  have  in  history 
or  mythology  for  placing  the  headquarters  and  metropolis 
of  god  Cupid  in  this  anatomical  seat  rather  than  in  any 


94  THE  ESSAYS  UF  ELIA. 

other,  is  not  very  cle;i.r  ;  but  we  have  got  it,  ;uul  it  will 
serve  as  well  as  any  ()tlier.  Else  we  might  easily 
imagine,  upon  some  other  system  whieh  might  have 
prevailed  for  anything  whicli  our  j^athology  knows  to  the 
contrary,  a  lover  addressing  his  mistress,  in  perfect 
simplicity  of  feeling,  "  Madam,  my  liver  and  fortune  arc 
entirely  at  your  disposal ;"  or  putting  a  delicate  question, 
"  Amanda,  have  you  a  midriff  to  bestow  f  But  custom 
has  settled  these  things,  and  awarded  the  seat  of  senti- 
ment to  the  aforesaid  triangle,  while  its  less  fortunate 
neighl)ours  wait  at  animal  and  anatomical  distance. 

Not  many  sounds  in  life,  and  I  include  all  urban  and 
all  rural  sounds,  exceed  in  interest  a  Icnoch  at  the  door. 
It  "  gives  a  very  echo  to  the  throne  where  hope  is 
seated."  But  its  issues  seldom  answer  to  this  oracle 
within.  It  is  so  seldom  that  just  the  person  we  want  to 
see  comes.  But  of  all  the  clamorous  visitations  the 
welcomest  in  expectation  is  the  sound  that  ushers  in,  or 
seems  to  usher  in,  a  Valentine.  As  the  raven  himself 
was  hoarse  that  announced  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan, 
so  the  knock  of  the  postman  on  this  day  is  light,  airy, 
confident,  and  befitting  one  that  bringeth  good  tidings. 
It  is  less  mechanical  than  on  other  days ;  you  will  say, 
"  That  is  not  the  post,  I  am  sure."  Visions  of  Love,  of 
Cupids,  of  Hymens  ! — delightfid  eternal  commonplaces, 
Avliich  "  having  been  will  always  be;"  which  no  school- 
boy nor  school-man  can  write  away  ;  having  your  irrever- 
sible throne  in  the  fancy  and  affections — what  are  your 
transports,  when  the  happy  maiden,  opening  with  careful 
finger,  careful  not  to  break  the  emblematic  seal,  bursts 
upon  the  sight  of  some  well-designed  allegory,  some  ij\yc, 
some  youthful  fancy,  not  without  verses — 

Lovers  all, 
A  madrigal, 

or  some  such  device,  not  over-abmidant  in  sense — yoimg 
Love  disclaims  it,  —  and  not  quite  silly  —  something 
between  wind  and  water,  a  chorus  wdiere  the  sheeji  might 


valentine's  day.  95 

almost  join  the  slicplR'nl,  as  tln'y  did,  nr  ;is  1  a|i|irfli(iid 
tlioy  did,  in  Arcadia. 

All  Valcutiucs  are  not  foolish  ;  and  I  shall  not  easily 
forget  thine,  my  kind  friend  (if  I  may  have  leave  to  eall 

you  so)  E.  B .      E.  B.  lived  opposite  a  yovmti;  maiden 

whom  he  had  often  seen,  miseen,  from  his  parlour  window- 
in  C e  Street.     She  was  all  joyousness  and  innocence, 

and  just  of  an  age  to  enjoy  receiving  a  Valentine,  and 
just  of  a  temper  to  Lear  the  disappointment  of  missing 
one  with  good  hmnour.  E.  B.  is  an  artist  of  no  common 
powers ;  in  the  fancy  parts  of  designing,  perhaps  inferior 
to  none ;  his  name  is  known  at  the  bottom  of  many  a 
well-executed  vignette  in  the  way  of  his  profession,  but 
no  further ;  for  E.  B.  is  modest,  and  the  world  meets 
nol)ody  half  way.  E.  B.  meditated  how  he  could  repay 
this  young  maiden  for  many  a  favoitr  which  she  had  done 
him  unknown  ;  for  when  a  kindly  fiice  greets  us,  though 
but  passing  l)y,  and  never  knows  us  again,  nor  we  it,  we 
should  feel  it  as  an  obligation  :  and  E.  B.  did.  This 
good  artist  set  himself  at  work  to  please  the  damsel.  It 
was  just  before  Valentine's  day  three  years  since.  He 
wrought,  misecn  and  unsuspected,  a  wondrous  work. 
We  need  not  say  it  was  on  the  finest  -gilt  pajier  with 
borders — full,  not  of  connnon  hearts  and  heartless  alle- 
gory, but  all  the  prettiest  stories  of  love  from  Ovid,  and 
older  poets  than  Ovid  (for  E.  B.  is  a  scholar).  There 
was  Pyramus  and  Thislie,  and  be  sm-e  Dido  was  not  for- 
got, nor  Hero  and  Leander,  and  swans  more  than  sang 
in  Cayster,  with  mottoes  and  fanciful  devices,  such  as 
beseemed — a  work,  in  short,  of  magic.  Iris  dijit  the 
woof.  This  on  Valentine's  eve  he  commended  to  the 
all-swaUowing  indiscriminate  orifice  (0  ignolile  tnist !)  of 
the  common  post ;  but  the  humble  medium  did  its  duty, 
and  from  his  watchful  stand  the  next  morning  he  saw 
the  cheerful  messenger  knock,  and  by-and-by  the  precious 
charge  delivered.  He  saw,  unseen,  the  happy  girl  unfold 
the  Valentine,  dance  aliout,  clap  her  hands,  as  one  after 
one    the    pretty    emblems    luifolded     themselves.     She 


96  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

(liinced  about,  not  with  liniit  love,  or  I'oolisli  expe(itiitioii8, 
for  she  had  no  lover;  or,  if  she  had,  none  she  knew  that 
could  have  created  those  bright  images  which  delighted 
her.  It  was  more  like  some  fairy  present ;  a  God-send, 
as  our  familiarly  pious  ancestors  termed  a  benefit  received 
where  the  benefactor  was  unknown.  It  would  do  her  no 
harm.  It  would  do  her  good  for  ever  after.  It  is  good 
to  love  the  unknown.  I  only  give  this  as  a  specimen  of 
E.  B.  and  his  modest  way  of  doing  a  concealed  kindness. 
Good  morrow  to  my  Valentine,  sings  j^oor  Ophelia ; 
and  no  better  wish,  but  with  better  auspices,  we  wish  to 
all  faithful  lovers,  who  are  not  too  wise  to  desi)ise  old 
legends,  but  are  content  to  rank  themselves  humble 
diocesans  of  old  Bishop  Valentine  and  his  true  chui'ch. 


MY  RELATIONS. 

I  AM  arrived  at  that  point  of  life  at  whi(!h  a  man  may 
account  it  a  blessing,  as  it  is  a  singularity,  if  he  have 
either  of  his  parents  surviving.  I  have  not  that  felicity — 
and  sometimes  think  feelingly  of  a  passage  in  "Browne's 
Christian  Morals,"  where  he  speaks  of  a  man  that  hath 
lived  sixty  or  seventy  years  in  the  world.  "  In  such  a  com- 
pass of  time,"  he  says,  "  a  man  may  have  a  close  ap^jre- 
hension  what  it  is  to  be  forgotten,  when  he  hath  lived  to 
find  none  who  coidd  remember  his  father,  or  scarcely  the 
friends  of  his  youth,  and  may  sensibly  see  with  what  a. 
face  in  no  long  time  Oblivion  will  look  upon  himself" 

I  had  an  aunt,  a  dear  and  good  one.  She  was  one 
whom  single  blessedness  had  soured  to  the  world.  She 
often  used  to  say,  that  I  was  the  only  thing  in  it  which 
she  loved ;  and,  when  she  thought  I  was  quitting  it,  she 
grieved  over  me  with  mother's  tears.  A  partiality  quite 
so  exclusive  my  reason  cannot  altogether  approve.  She 
was  from  morning  till  night  poring  over  good  books  and 
devotional    exercises.       Her    favourite    volumes    were, 


MY  RELATIONS.  97 

"  Thomas  a  Kempis,"  in  Staulioije's  translation ;  and  a 
Roman  Catholic  Prayer  Book,  with  the  matins  and  com- 
plines regularly  set  down — terms  which  I  was  at  that 
time  too  young  to  understand.  She  pei-sisted  in  reading 
them,  although  admonished  daily  concerning  their  Papis- 
tical tendency ;  and  went  to  church  every  Sabbath,  as  a 
good  Protestant  should  do.  These  were  the  only  books 
slie  stutlied ;  though,  I  think  at  one  j^eriod  of  her  life, 
she  told  me,  slie  had  read  -fl-ith  great  satistaction  the 
"  Adventm-es  of  an  Unfortunate  Yoimg  Nobleman." 
Finding  the  door  of  the  chapel  in  Essex  Street  open  one 
day — it  was  in  the  infoncy  of  that  heresy — she  went  in, 
liked  the  sermon,  and  the  manner  of  worship,  and 
frequented  it  at  intervals  for  some  time  after.  She  came 
not  for  doctrinal  points,  and  never  jnissed  them.  With 
some  little  asperities  in  her  constitution,  which  I  have 
above  hinted  at,  she  was  a  steadfast,  friendly  being,  and 
a  fine  old  Christian.  She  was  a  woman  of  strong  sense, 
and  a  shrewd  mind — extraordiuaiy  at  a  repartee;  one  of 
the  few  occasions  of  her  breaking  sdence — else  she  did 
not  much  value  wit.  The  only  secidar  emplojnnent  I 
remember  to  have  seen  her  engaged  in,  was  the  splitting 
of  French  beans,  and  dropping  them  into  a  china  basin  of 
ftur  water.  The  odom-  of  those  tender  vegetables  to  this 
day  comes  back  upon  my  sense,  redolent  of  soothing 
recollections.  Certainly  it  is  the  most  delicate  of  cidinary 
operations. 

Male  aunts,  as  somebody  calls  them,  I  had  none — to 
remember.  By  the  uncle's  side  I  may  be  said  to  have 
been  born  an  orphan.  Brother,  or  sister,  I  never  had 
any — to  know  them.  A  sister,  I  think,  that  shoidd 
have  been  Elizabeth,  died  in  both  our  infancies.  What 
a  comfort,  or  what  a  care,  may  I  not  have  missed  in 
her ! — But  I  have  coiisins  sprinkled  about  in  Hertford- 
shire— besides  ttvo,  with  whom  I  have  been  all  my  life 
in  habits  of  the  closest  intimacy,  and  whom  I  may  term 
cousins  j?ar  excellence.  These  are  James  and  Bridget 
Elia.     They  are  older  than  myself  by  twelve,  and  ten, 

H 


98  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

years;  and  neither  of  tlieni  seems  disposed,  in  matters  of 
advice  and  guidance,  to  waive  any  of  the  prerogatives 
which  primogeniture  confers.  May  they  continue  still  in 
the  same  mind ;  and  when  they  shall  he  seventy-five, 
and  seventy-three,  years  old  (I  cannot  spare  them  sooner), 
persist  in  treating  me  in  my  grand  climacteric  precisely 
as  a  stripling,  or  younger  brother  ! 

James  is  an  inexplicable  cousin.  Nature  hath  her 
unities,  which  not  every  critic  can  i)enetrate ;  or,  if  we 
feel,  we  cannot  explain  them.  The  pen  of  Yorick,  and 
of  none  since  his,  could  have  drawn  J.  E.  entire — those 
fine  Shandean  lights  and  shades,  which  make  up  his 
story.  I  must  limp  after  in  my  poor  antithetical  manner, 
as  the  fates  have  given  me  grace  and  talent.  J.  E. 
then — to  the  eye  of  a  common  observer  at  least — seemeth 
made  up  of  contradictory  principles.  The  genuine  child 
of  impidse,  the  frigid  philosopher  of  prudence  —  the 
phlegm  of  my  cousin's  doctrine,  is  invariably  at  war  with 
his  temperament,  which  is  high  sanguine.  With  always 
some  fire-new  project  in  his  brain,  J.  E.  is  the  systematic 
oi^ponent  of  innovation,  and  crier  down  of  everything 
that  has  not  stood  the  test  of  age  and  experiment.  With 
a  hundred  fine  notions  chasing  one  another  hourly  in  his 
fancy,  he  is  startled  at  the  least  approach  to  the  romantic 
in  others ;  and,  determined  by  his  own  sense  in  every- 
thing, commends  you  to  the  guidance  of  common  sense 
on  all  occasions. — With  a  touch  of  the  eccentric  in  all 
which  he  does  or  says,  he  is  only  anxious  that  you  shoidd 
not  commit  yourself  by  doing  anything  absurd  or  singular. 
On  my  once  letting  slip  at  table,  that  I  was  not  fond  of 
a  certain  popular  dish,  he  begged  me  at  any  rate  not  to 
&ay  so — for  the  world  would  think  me  mad.  He  dis- 
guises a  passionate  fondness  for  works  of  high  art 
(whereof  he  hath  amassed  a  choice  collection),  imder  the 
pretext  of  buying  only  to  sell  again — that  his  enthusiasm 
may  give  no  encouragement  to  yours.  Yet,  if  it  were  so, 
why  does  that  piece  of  tender,  pastoral  Domenichino  hang 
still  by  his  wall  1 — is  the  ball  of  his  sight  much  more 


MY  EEL^VTIONS.  99 

dear   to    him? — or  what  picttu'e- dealer   can   talk    like 
hiin? 

Whereas  mankind  in  general  are  obsen^ed  to  warp 
their  siiecidative  conclusions  to  the  bent  of  their  in- 
dividual hmnom's,  his  theories  are  sure  to  be  in  diamet- 
rical opposition  to  his  constitution.  He  is  courageous  as 
Charles  of  Sweden,  upon  instinct ;  chary  of  his  person 
upon  principle,  a.s  a  travelling  Qliaker.  He  has  been 
preaching  up  to  me,  all  my  life,  the  doctrine  of  bowing 
to  the  gTeat — the  necessity  of  forms,  and  manner,  to  a 
man's  getting  on  in  the  world.  He  himself  never  aims 
at  either,  that  I  can  tUscover, —  and  has  a  spirit  that 
woidd  stand  upright  in  the  presence  of  the  Cham  of 
Tartaiy.  It  is  pleasant  to  hear  him  discoiu-se  of  patience 
— extolling  it  as  the  truest  wisdom — and  to  see  him 
diu-ing  the  last  seven  minutes  that  his  dinner  is  getting 
ready.  Nature  never  ran  up  in  her  haste  a  more  restless 
piece  of  workmanship  than  when  she  mordded  this  im- 
petuous cousin  ^ — and  Art  never  turned  out  a  more 
elaborate  orator  than  he  can  display  himself  to  be,  upon 
his  fiivoiu-ite  topic  of  the  advantages  of  quiet  and  con- 
tentedness  in  the  state,  whatever  it  be,  that  we  are 
placed  in.  He  is  triumphant  on  this  theme,  when  he 
has  you  safe  in  one  of  those  short  stages  that  ply  for  the 
western  road,  in  a  very  obstnicting  manner,  at  the  foot 
of  John  Mm-ray's  Street — where  you  get  in  when  it  is 
empty,  and  are  expected  to  wait  till  the  vehicle  hath 
completed  her  just  freight — a  tiying  three  quarters  of  an 
horn"  to  some  people.  He  wondei-s  at  yom*  fidgetiness, — 
"  where  could  we  be  better  than  we  are,  thus  sitting,  thus 
consulting  ?  " — "  prefers,  for  his  part,  a  state  of  rest  to 
locomotion," — with  an  eye  all  the  while  upon  the  coach- 
man,— till  at  length,  waxing  out  of  all  patience,  at  your 
u'ani  of  it,  he  breaks  out  into  a  pathetic  remonstrance  at 
the  fellow  for  detaining  ils  so  long  over  the  time  which 
he  had  professed,  and  declares  peremptorily,  that  "  the 
gentleman  in  the  coach  is  determined  to  get  out,  if  he 
does  not  drive  on  that  instant." 


100  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Vciy  quick  at  inventing  au  argninent,  or  detecting  a 
sophistry,  he  is  incapable  of  attending  you  in  any  chain 
of  arguing.  Indeed,  he  makes  wild  work  with  logic ; 
and  seems  to  jump  at  most  admirable  conclusions  by 
some  process  not  at  all  akin  to  it.  Consojiantly  enough 
to  this,  he  hath  been  heard  to  deny,  upon  certain 
occasions,  that  there  exists  such  a  facidty  at  all  in  man 
as  reason  ;  and  wonderetli  how  man  came  first  to  have  a 
(!onceit  of  it — enforcing  his  negation  with  all  the  might 
of  reasoning  he  is  master  of  He  has  some  speculative 
notions  against  laiiglitcr,  and  will  maintain  that  laughing 
is  not  natm'al  to  him  —  when  peradventm'e  the  next 
moment  his  lungs  shall  crow  like  cliauticleer.  He  says 
some  of  the  best  things  in  the  world,  and  declareth  that 
wit  is  his  aversion.  It  was  he  who  said,  upon  seeing 
the  Eton  boys  at  play  in  their  grounds —  What  a  inty  to 
think  that  these  fine  ingenuous  lads  in  a  few  years  tvill 
all  he  changed  into  frivolous  Members  of  Parliament ! 

His  youth  was  fiery,  glowing,  tempestuous  —  and  in 
age  he  discovereth  no  symptom  of  cooling.  This  is  that 
which  I  admire  in  him.  I  hate  people  who  meet  Time 
half  way.  I  am  for  no  compromise  with  that  inevitable 
spoiler.  While  he  lives,  J.  E.  will  take  his  swing.— It 
does  me  good,  as  I  walk  towards  the  street  of  my  daily 
avocation,  on  some  fine  May  morning,  to  meet  him 
marching  in  a  quite  oppasite  direction,  with  a  jolly  hand- 
some presence,  and  shining  sanguine  face,  that  indicates 
some  purchase  in  his  eye— a  Claude — or  a  Hobbima — 
for  much  of  his  enviable  leism'e  is  consumed  at  Christie's 
and  Phillips's — or  where  not,  to  pick  up  pictm'es,  and 
such  gauds.  On  these  occasions  he  mostly  stoppeth  me, 
to  read  a  short  lecture  on  the  advantage  a  person  like  me 
possesses  above  himself,  in  having  his  time  occupied  with 
business  which  he  must  do — assiu-eth  me  that  he  often 
feels  it  hang  heavy  on  his  hands — wishes  he  had  fewer 
holidays — and  goes  off — Westward  Ho  ! — chanting  a  time, 
to  Pall  ]\Iall — perfectly  convinced  that  he  has  convinced 
me — wlxile  I  proceed  in  my  opposite  direction  tuneless. 


MY  RELATIONS.  101 

It  is  pleasant,  again,  to  see  this  Professor  of  Indiffer- 
ence doing  the  honoiu's  of  his  new  purchase,  when  he  has 
fairly  housed  it.  You  must  view  it  in  eveiy  light,  till  lie 
has  found  the  best — placing  it  at  this  distance,  and  at 
that,  but  always  suiting  the  focus  of  your  sight  to  his 
own.  You  must  spy  at  it  tlirough  yoiu-  fingers,  to  catch 
the  aerial  pei-spective — though  you  assure  him  that  to  you 
the  landscape  shows  much  more  agreeable  without  that 
artifice.  Woe  be  to  the  luckless  wight  who  does  not 
only  not  respond  to  his  rapture,  but  who  shoidd  di'op  an 
imseasonable  intimation  of  preferring  one  of  his  anterior 
bargains  to  the  ^jreseut  ! — The  last  is  always  his  best  hit 
— his  "  C>Tithia  of  the  minute." — Alas  !  how  many  a  mild 
Madonna  have  I  known  to  come  in — a  Raphael ! — keep 
its  ascendency  for  a  few  brief  moons — then,  after  certain 
intennedial  degradations,  from  the  front  fbawing-room  to 
the  back  gallery,  thence  to  the  dark  parlour, — adopted 
in  tm-n  by  each  of  the  CaiTacci,  under  successive  lower- 
ing ascriptions  of  filiation,  mUdly  breaking  its  fall — con- 
signed to  the  oblivif)Us  lumber-room,  go  otit  at  last  a 
Lucca  Giordano,  or  plain  Carlo  Maratti ! — which  things 
when  I  beheld  —  musing  upon  the  chances  and  mut- 
abilities of  fate  below  hath  made  me  to  reflect  upon  the 
altered  condition  of  great  pei-sonagesj  or  that  woeful 
Queen  of  Richard  the  Second — 

set  fortli  ill  pomp, 

She  came  adonu-d  hither  like  sweet  May  ; 
Sent  back  like  Hallowmass  or  shortest  daj'. 

With  great  love  for  you,  J.  E.  hath  but  a  limited  s;stii- 
pathy  with  what  you  feel  or  do.  He  lives  in  a  world 
of  his  own,  and  makes  slender  guesses  at  what  passes  in 
your  mind.  He  never  pierces  the  marrow  of  yom*  habits. 
He  will  tell  an  old  established  play-goer,  that  Mr.  Such- 
a-one,  of  So-and-so  (naming  one  of  the  theatres),  Ls  a 
very  lively  comedian — as  a  piece  of  news  !  He  advertised 
me  but  the  other  day  of  some  pleasant  green  lanes  which 
he  had  foimd  out  for  me,  knouing  me  to  be  a  great  ivallcer,. 


102  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

in  my  o\ni  immediate  vicinity — who  have  haunted  the 
identical  spot  any  time  these  twenty  years  ! — He  has  not 
much  respect  for  that  chxss  of  feelings  which  goes  by  the 
name  of  sentimental.  He  applies  the  definition  of  real 
evil  to  bodily  sufferings  exclusively — and  rejecteth  all 
others  as  imaginary.  He  is  affected  by  the  sight,  or  the 
bare  supposition,  of  a  creature  in  pain,  to  a  degree  which 
I  have  never  witnessed  out  of  womankind.  A  con- 
stitutional acuteness  to  this  class  of  sufferings  may  in 
l)art  account  for  this.  The  animal  tribe  in  parti cidar  he 
taketli  under  his  especial  protection.  A  broken-winded 
or  spur-galled  horse  is  sure  to  find  an  advocate  in  him. 
An  over-loaded  ass  is  his  client  for  ever.  He  is  the 
apostle  to  the  brute  kind — the  never-foiling  friend  of 
those  who  have  none  to  care  for  them.  The  contem- 
plation of  a  lobster  boiled,  or  eels  skinned  alive,  vnW  wring 
him  so,  that  "  all  for  pity  he  coidd  die."  It  will  take 
the  savom-  from  his  palate,  and  the  rest  from  his  pillow, 
for  days  and  nights.  With  the  intense  feeling  of 
Thomas  Clarkson,  he  wanted  only  the  steadiness  of 
pursiut,  and  unity  of  pm-pose,  of  that  "  true  yoke-fellow 
with  Time,"  to  have  eftected  as  much  for  the  Animal  as 
he  hath  done  for  the  Negro  Creation.  But  my  uncon- 
trollable cousin  is  but  imperfectly  formed  for  purposes 
which  demand  co-operation.  He  cannot  wait.  His 
amelioration-i^laus  must  be  ripened  in  a  day.  For  this 
reason  he  has  cut  but  an  equivocal  figure  in  benevolent 
societies,  and  combmations  for  the  alleviation  of  human 
sufferings.  His  zeal  constantly  makes  him  to  outnin, 
and  put  out,  his  coadjutors.  He  thinks  of  relieving, — 
while  they  think  of  debating.  He  was  black-balled  out 
of  a  society  for  the  Relief  of  *  *  *  * 

because  the  fervour  of  his  humanity  toiled  beyond  the 
formal  apin-ehension  and  creeping  processes  of  his  asso- 
ciates. I  shall  always  consider  this  distinction  as  a 
patent  of  nol)ility  in  the  Elia  family  ! 

Do  I  mention  tliese  seeming  inconsistencies  to  smile 
at,  or  upbraid,  my  unique  cousin  ?     Marry,  heaven,  and 


MACKERY  END,   IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.  103 

all  good  manners,  and  the  understanding  that  should  be 
between  kinsfolk,  forbid  ! — Witli  all  the  strangenesses  of 
this  strangest  of  the  Elias — I  would  not  have  him  in  one 
jot  or  tittle  other  than  he  is ;  neither  would  I  barter  or 
exchange  my  wild  kinsman  for  the  most  exact,  regular, 
and  every  way  consistent  kinsman  breathing. 

In  my  next,  reader,  I  may  perhaps  give  you  some 
accoimt  of  my  cousin  Bridget — if  you  are  not  already 
siu-feited  with  cousins — and  take  you  by  the  hand,  if 
you  are  willing  to  go  with  us,  on  an  excursion  which 
we  made  a  summer  or  two  since,  in  search  of  vwi-e 
cousins — 

Through  the  green  plains  of  pleasant  Hertfordshire. 


MACKERY  END,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE. 

Bridget  Elia  has  been  my  housekeeper  for  many  a  long 
year.  I  have  obligations  to  Bridget,  extending  beyond 
the  period  of  memory.  We  house  together,  old  bachelor 
and  maid,  in  a  sort  of  double  singleness ;  with  such 
tolerable  comfort,  upon  the  whole,  that  I,  for  one,  find 
in  myself  no  sort  of  disposition  to  go  out  upon  the 
mountains,  with  the  rash  king's  offspring,  to  bewail  my 
celibacy.  We  agree  pretty  well  in  our  tastes  and  habits 
— yet  so,  as  "  with  a  ditierence."  We  are  generally  in 
harmony,  with  occasional  bickerings — as  it  shoidd  be 
among  near  relations.  Om*  sympathies  are  rather  under- 
stood than  expressed ;  and  once,  upon  my  dissembling  a 
tone  in  my  voice  more  kind  than  ordinary,  my  cousin 
burst  into  teai's,  and  complained  that  I  was  altered.  We 
are  both  great  readers  in  different  directions.  WhUe  I 
am  hanging  over  (for  the  thousandth  time)  some  passage 
in  old  Burton,  or  one  of  his  strange  contemporaries,  she 
is  abstracted  in  some  modern  tale  or  adventm'e,  whereof 
oiu"  common  reading-table  is  daily  fed  ^Wth  assiduously 
fresh  supplies.     Narrative  teases  me.     I  have  little  con- 


104  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

ceni  iu  the  progress  of  events.  She  must  have  a  story — 
well,  ill,  or  iiiclitierently  told — so  there  be  life  stu'riug  in 
it,  and  j^lenty  of  good  or  evil  accidents.  The  fluctuations 
of  fortune  in  fiction  —  and  almost  in  real  life  —  have 
ceased  to  interest,  or  ojjerate  but  dully  ujion  me.  Out-of- 
the-way  humom-s  and  opinions — heads  with  some  divert- 
ing twist  in  them — tlie  oddities  of  authorehip,  please  me 
most.  My  cousin  lias  a  native  disrelish  of  anything  that 
sounds  odd  or  bizarre.  Nothing  goes  down  with  her 
that  is  quaint,  irregular,  or  out  of  the  road  of  common 
sympathy.  She  "  holds  Nature  more  clever."  I  can 
pardon  her  blindness  to  the  beautiful  obliquities  of  the 
Religio  Medici ;  but  she  must  apologize  to  me  for  certain 
disrespectfid  insinuations,  which  she  has  been  jDleased  to 
throw  out  latterly,  touching  the  intellectuals  of  a  dear 
favourite  of  mine,  of  the  last  century  but  one  —  the 
thrice  noble,  chaste,  and  virtuous,  but  again  somewhat 
fantastical  and  original  brained,  generous  Margaret  New- 
castle. 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener  perhaps  than 
I  could  have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates  and 
mine,  free-thinkers — ^  leaders,  and  disciples,  of  novel 
philosophies  and  systems  ;  but  she  neither  wrangles  with, 
nor  accepts,  their  opinions.  That  which  was  good  and 
venerable  to  her,  when  a  child,  retains  its  authority  over 
her  mind  still.  She  never  juggles  or  plays  tricks  with 
her  understanding. 

We  are  both  of  us  inclined  to  be  a  little  too  positive ; 
and  I  have  observed  the  result  of  our  disputes  to  be  almost 
uniformly  this — that  in  matters  of  fact,  dates,  and  circmn- 
stances,  it  turns  out  that  I  was  in  the  right,  and  my  cousin 
in  the  wrong.  But  where  we  have  differed  upon  moral 
points  ;  upon  something  proper  to  be  done,  or  let  alone  ; 
whatever  heat  of  opposition  or  steadiness  of  conviction  I 
set  out  with,  I  am  sure  always,  in  the  long-run,  to  be 
broiight  over  to  her  way  of  thinking. 

I  nuist  touch  ujton  the  foibles  of  my  kinswoman  with 
a  gentle  bond,  for  Bridget  does  not  like  to  be  told  of  her 


MACKERY  END,   IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.  105 

faults.  She  hath  au  awkward  trick  (to  say  no  worse 
of  it)  of  reading  in  company  -.  at  which  times  she  will 
answer  yes  or  no  to  a  question,  without  fidly  under- 
standing its  purport — which  is  provoking,  and  derogatoiy 
in  the  highest  degree  to  the  dignity  of  the  putter  of  the 
said  question.  Her  presence  of  mind  is  equal  to  the 
most  pressing  trials  of  life,  but  will  sometimes  desert  her 
upon  trifling  occasions.  When  the  purpose  requires  it, 
and  is  a  thing  of  moment,  she  can  speak  to  it  gTeatly ; 
but  in  matters  which  are  not  stufl"  of  the  conscience, 
she  hath  been  known  sometimes  to  let  shp  a  word  less 
seasonably. 

Her  education  in  youth  was  not  much  attended  to ; 
and  she  happily  missed  all  that  train  of  female  garnitiu'e 
which  passeth  by  the  name  of  accomplishments.  She 
was  tumbled  early,  by  accident  or  design,  into  a  spacious 
closet  of  good  old  English  reading,  without  much  selection 
or  prohibition,  and  browsed  at  will  upon  that  feir  and 
wholesome  pastm-age.  Had  I  twenty  girls,  they  shoidd 
be  brought  up  exactly  in  this  fiishion.  I  know  not 
whether  their  chance  in  wedlock  might  not  be  diminished 
by  it,  but  I  can  answer  for  it  that  it  makes  (if  the  worst 
come  to  the  worst)  most  incomparable  old  maids. 

In  a  season  of  distress,  she  is  the  tniest  comforter ; 
but  in  the  teasing  accidents  and  minor  perplexities,  which 
do  not  call  out  the  tvill  to  meet  them,  she  sometimes 
maketh  matters  worse  by  an  excess  of  participation.  If 
she  does  not  always  divide  yom*  trouble,  upon  the  plea- 
santer  occasions  of  life  she  is  sure  always  to  treble  yom- 
satisfaction.  She  is  excellent  to  be  at  a  play  with,  or 
upon  a  \isit ;  but  best,  when  she  goes  a  joiu*ney  with  you. 

We  made  an  exciu-sion  together  a  few  simmiers  since 
into  Hertfordshire,  to  beat  up  the  quarters  of  some  of  our 
less-known  relations  in  that  fine  corn  country. 

The  oldest  thing  I  remember  is  Mackeiy  End,  or 
Mackarel  End,  as  it  is  spelt,  perhaps  more  properly,  in 
some  old  maps  of  Hertfordshii-e  ;  a  farm-house, — delight- 
fidly  situatecl  within  a  gentle  walk  from  Wheathanipstead. 


106  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

I  can  just  remember  having  been  there,  on  a  visit  to  a 
great-aunt,  when  I  was  a  child,  under  the  care  of  Bridget ; 
who,  as  I  have  said,  is  older  than  myself  by  some  ten 
years.  I  wish  tliat  I  could  throw  into  a  heap  the  re- 
mainder of  oiu"  joint  existences,  that  we  might  share 
tlumi  in  e({ual  division.  But  that  is  impossible.  The 
house  was  at  that  time  in  the  occupation  of  a  substantial 
yeoman,  who  liad  married  my  grandmother's  sister.  His 
name  was  Gladman.  My  grandmother  was  a  Bniton, 
married  to  a  Field.  The  Gladmans  and  the  Brutous  are 
still  flourishing  in  that  part  of  the  county,  but  the  Fields 
are  almost  extinct.  More  than  forty  years  had  elapsed 
since  the  visit  I  speak  of;  and,  for  the  gi'eater  portion  of 
that  period,  we  had  lost  sight  of  the  other  two  branches 
also.  Who  or  what  sort  of  persons  inherited  Mackery 
End — kindred  or  strange  folk — we  were  afraid  almost  to 
conjecture,  but  determined  some  day  to  explore. 

By  somewhat  a  circuitous  route,  taking  the  noble  park 
at  Luton  in  our  way  from  St.  Albans,  we  arrived  at  the 
spot  of  our  anxious  curiosity  about  noon.  The  sight  of 
the  old  farm-house,  though  every  trace  of  it  was  effaced 
from  my  recollections,  affected  me  with  a  pleasure  which 
I  had  not  experienced  for  many  a  year.  For  though  / 
had  forgotten  it,  ive  had  never  forgotten  being  there 
together,  and  we  had  been  talking  about  Mackerj^  End 
all  our  lives,  till  memory  on  my  part  became  mocked 
with  a  phantom  of  itself,  and  I  thought  I  knew  the 
aspect  of  a  place  which,  when  present,  0  how  unlike  it 
was  to  tliat  which  I  had  conjured  up  so  many  times 
instead  of  it ! 

Still  the  air  breathed  balmily  about  it ;  the  season 
was  in  the  "  heart  of  June,"  and  I  coidd  say  with  the 
poet, 

But  tliou,  that  didst  appear  so  fair 

To  fond  imagination, 
Dost  rival  in  the  light  of  day 

Her  delicate  creation  ! 

Bridget's  was  more  a  waking  bliss  than  mine,  for  she 


JIACKERY  END,   IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.  107 

easily  remembered  her  old  acquaintance  again — some 
altered  features,  of  coiu'se,  a  little  gTudged  at.  At  fii'st, 
indeed,  she  was  ready  to  disbelieve  for  joy ;  but  the  scene 
soon  re-confu'med  itself  in  her  affections — and  she  traversed 
every  outjjost  of  the  old  mansion,  to  the  wood-house,  the 
orchard,  the  place  where  the  pigeon -house  had  stood 
(house  and  birds  were  alike  flown) — with  a  breathless 
imimtience  of  recognition,  which  was  more  pardonaljle 
perhaps  than  decorous  at  the  age  of  fifty  odd.  But 
Bridget  in  some  things  is  behind  her  years. 

The  only  thing  left  was  to  get  into  the  house — and 
that  was  a  diflicidty  which  to  me  singly  would  have  been 
insurmountable ;  for  I  am  terribly  shy  in  making  myself 
kno\\ni  to  strangers  and  out-of-date  kinsfolk.  Love, 
stronger  than  scruple,  winged  my  cousin  in  without  me ; 
but  she  soon  returned  with  a  creature  that  might  have 
sat  to  a  scidjitor  for  the  image  of  Welcome.  It  was  the 
yoimgest  of  the  Gladmans;  who,  by  marriage  with  a 
Bruton,  had  become  mistress  of  the  old  mansion.  A 
comely  brood  are  the  Brutons.  Six  of  them,  females, 
were  noted  as  the  handsomest  young  women  in  the 
county.  But  this  adopted  Bniton,  in  my  mind,  was 
better  than  they  all — more  comely.  She  was  born  too 
late  to  have  remembered  me.  She  just  recollected  in 
early  life  to  have  had  her  cousin  Bridget  once  pointed 
out  to  her,  climbing  a  stile.  But  the  name  of  kindred 
and  of  cousinship  Avas  enough.  Those  slender  ties,  that 
prove  slight  as  gossamer  in  the  rentling  atmosphere  of 
a  metropolis,  bind  faster,  as  we  found  it,  in  hearty, 
homely,  loving  Hertfordshire.  In  five  minutes  we  were 
as  thoroughly  acquainted  as  if  we  had  been  born  and 
bred  up  together ;  were  familiar,  even  to  the  calling  each 
other  by  our  Christian  names.  So  Christians  shoidd  call 
one  another.  To  have  seen  Bridget  and  her — it  was  like 
the  meeting  of  the  two  scriptural  cousins  !  There  was  a 
gi'ace  and  dignity,  an  amijlitude  of  fonn  and  statm-e, 
answering  to  her  mind,  in  this  farmer's  wife,  which  would 
have  shined  in  a  palace — or  so  we  thought  it.     We  were 


108  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

made  welcome  by  liusbjiud  and  wife  equally — we,  and 
oiu-  friend  that  was  with  us. — I  had  almost  forgotten 
him — but  B.  F.  wiU  not  so  soon  forget  that  meeting,  if 
peradventure  he  shall  read  this  on  the  for  distant  shores 
where  the  kangaroo  haunts.  The  fatted  calf  was  made 
ready,  or  rather  was  already  so,  as  if  in  anticipation  of 
oui"  coming;  and,  after  an  appropriate  glass  of  native 
wine,  never  let  me  forget  with  what  honest  pride  this 
hospitable  cousin  made  us  proceed  to  ^^^leathampstead, 
to  introduce  us  (as  some  new-found  rarity)  to  her  mother 
and  sister  Gladmans,  who  did  indeed  know  something 
more  of  us,  at  a  time  when  she  almost  knew  nothing. — 
With  what  corresponding  kindness  we  were  received  by 
them  also — how  Bridget's  memory,  exalted  by  the  occa- 
sion, warmed  into  a  thousand  half-obliterated  recollections 
of  things  and  persons,  to  my  utter  astonishment,  and  her 
own — and  to  the  astoundment  of  B.  F.  who  sat  by,  almost 
the  only  thing  that  was  not  a  cousin  there, — old  effaced 
images  of  more  than  half-forgotten  names  and  circum- 
stances still  crowding  back  iipon  her,  as  words  WTitten  in 
lemon  come  out  upon  exposm"e  to  a  friendly  warmth, — 
when  I  forget  all  this,  then  may  my  country  cousins  for- 
get me  ;  and  Bridget  no  more  remember,  that  in  the  days 
of  weakling  infancy  I  was  her  tender  charge — as  I  have 
been  her  care  in  foolish  manhood  since — in  those  pretty 
pastoral  walks,  long  ago,  about  Mackery  End,  in  Hert- 
fordshire. 


MY  FIRST  PLAY. 

At  the  north  end  of  Cross-court  there  yet  stands  a  portal, 
of  some  architectural  pretensions,  though  reduced  to  hum- 
ble vise,  serving  at  present  for  an  entrance  to  a  printing- 
office.  This  old  door-way,  if  you  are  yomig,  reader,  you 
may  not  know  was  the  identical  pit  entrance  to  old  Drury 
— Garrick's  Drury — all  of  it  that  is  left.  I  never  pass  it 
without  shaking  some  forty  years  from  off  my  shoulders. 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  109 

recurriug  to  the  evening  when  I  passed  through  it  to  see 
my  first  play.  The  afternoon  had  been  wet,  and  the 
condition  of  om-  going  (the  elder  folks  and  myself)  was, 
that  the  rain  should  cease.  With  what  a  beating  heart 
did  I  watch  from  the  window  the  puddles,  from  the  still- 
ness of  which  I  was  taught  to  prognosticate  the  desired 
cessation  !  I  seem  to  remember  the  last  spurt,  and  the 
glee  with  which  I  ran  to  announce  it. 

We  went  with  orders,  which  my  godfather  F.  had  sent 
us.  He  kept  the  oil  sliop  (now  Davies's)  at  the  corner  of 
Featherstone-buildings,  in  Holborn.  F.  was  a  tall  grave 
person,  lofty  in  speech,  and  had  pretensions  above  his 
rank.  He  associated  in  those  days  with  John  Palmer, 
the  comedian,  whose  gait  and  bearing  he  seemed  to  copy ; 
if  John  (which  is  quite  as  likely)  did  not  rather  borrow 
somewhat  of  his  manner  from  my  godfather.  He  was 
also  known  to  and  visited  by  Sheridan.  It  was  to  his 
house  in  Holborn  that  yoimg  Brinsley  brought  his  fii'st 
wife  on  her  elopement  with  hun  from  a  boartling-school 
at  Bath — the  beautifid  Maria  Linley.  My  parents  were 
present  (over  a  quadrille  table)  when  he  arrived  in  the 
evening  with  his  harmonious  charge.  From  either  of 
these  connections  it  may  be  inferred  that  my  godfather 
could  command  an  order  for  the  then  Dnuy-lane  theatre 
at  pleasure — and,  indeed,  a  pretty  liberal  issue  of  those 
cheap  billets,  in  Brinsley's  easy  autograph,  I  have  heard 
him  say  was  the  sole  remimeration  which  he  had  received 
for  many  years'  nightly  illumination  of  the  orchestra  and 
various  avenues  of  that  theatre — and  he  was  content  it 
should  be  so.  The  honom-  of  Sheridan's  familiarity — or 
supposed  familiarity — was  better  to  my  godfather  than 
money. 

F.  was  the  most  gentlemanly  of  oilmen  ;  grandiloquent, 
yet  com-teous.  His  delivery  of  the  commonest  matters  of 
fact  was  Ciceronian.  He  had  two  Latin  words  almost 
constantly  in  his  mouth  (how  odd  soimds  Latin  from  an 
oilman's  lips  !),  which  my  better  knowledge  since  has 
enabled   me   to   correct.     In   strict   pronunciation   they 


110  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

should  have  been  sounded  vice  versd — but  in  those  young- 
years  they  impressed  nae  with  more  awe  than  they  woidd 
now  do,  read  aright  from  Seneca  or  Varro — in  his  own 
peculiar  pronunciation,  monosyllabically  elaborated,  or 
Anglicised,  into  something  like  verse  vn'ne.  By  an  im- 
posing manner,  and  the  help  of  these  distorted  syllables, 
he  climbed  (but  that  was  little)  to  the  highest  parochial 
honom's  which  St.  Andrew's  has  to  bestow. 

He  is  dead — and  thus  much  I  thought  due  to  liis 
memory,  both  for  my  first  orilers  (little  woncbous  talis- 
mans !— slight  keys,  and  insignificant  to  outward  sight, 
but  opening  to  me  more  than  Arabian  paradises  !)  and, 
moreover,  that  by  his  testamentary  beneficence  I  came 
into  possession  of  the  only  landed  property  which  I  could 
ever  call  my  own — situate  near  the  road-way  village  of 
pleasant  Puckeridge,  in  Hertfordshire.  When  I  jomiieyed 
down  to  take  possession,  and  planted  foot  on  my  own 
grovmd,  the  stately  habits  of  the  donor  descended  iipon 
me,  and  I  strode  (shall  I  confess  the  vanity  1)  with  larger 
paces  over  my  allotment  of  three  quarters  of  an  acre, 
with  its  commodious  mansion  in  the  midst,  with  the  feel- 
ing of  an  English  freeholder  that  all  betmxt  sky  and  centre 
was  my  own.  The  estate  has  passed  into  more  prudent 
hands,  and  nothing  but  an  agrarian  can  restore  it. 

In  those  days  were  pit  orders.  Beshrew  the  uncom- 
fortable manager  who  abolished  them  .'—with  one  of  these 
we  went.  I  remember  the  waiting  at  the  door — not  that 
which  is  left — but  between  that  and  an  inner  door  in 
shelter — 0  when  shall  I  be  such  an  expectant  again  ! — 
with  the  cry  of  nonpareils,  an  indispensable  play-house 
accompaniment  in  those  days.  As  near  as  I  can  recollect, 
the  fashionable  pronunciation  of  the  theatrical  fiaiiteresses 
then  was,  "  Chase  some  oranges,  chase  some  munparels, 
chase  a  bill  of  the  play ; " — chase  j)ro  chuse.  But  when 
we  got  in,  and  I  beheld  the  gi'een  curtain  that  veiled  a 
heaven  to  my  imagination,  which  was  soon  to  be  disclosed 
— the  breathless  anticipations  I  endured  !  I  had  seen 
something  like  it  in  the  plate  prefixed  to  Troilus  and 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  Ill 

Cressida,  iu  Rowe's  Sliakspeare — the  tent  Bcene  with 
Diomede — and  a  sight  of  that  phxte  can  always  bring 
back  in  a  measiu'e  the  feeling  of  that  evening. — The 
boxes  at  that  time,  full  of  well-dressed  women  of  quality, 
projected  over  the  pit ;  and  the  pilasters  reaching  down 
were  adorned  with  a  gUstening  substance  (I  know  not 
what)  under  glass  (as  it  seemed),  resembling — a  homely 
fancy — but  I  judged  it  to  be  sugar-candy- — yet  to  my 
raised  imagination,  divested  of  its  homelier  (qualities,  it 
appeared  a  glorified  candy  !  —  The  orchestra  lights  at 
length  rose,  those  "  fail"  Am'oras  !"  Once  the  bell  sounded. 
It  was  to  ring  or;t  yet  once  again — and,  incapable  of  the 
anticipation,  I  reposed  my  shut  eyes  in  a  sort  of  resigna- 
tion upon  the  maternal  lap.  It  rang  the  second  time. 
The  cm-tain  (bew  up — I  was  not  past  six  years  old,  and 
the  play  was  Ai'taxerxes  ! 

I  had  dabbled  a  little  in  the  Universal  History — the 
ancient  part  of  it — and  here  was  the  com't  of  Persia. — It 
was  being  admitted  to  a  sight  of  the  past.  I  took  no 
proper  interest  in  the  action  going  on,  for  I  understood 
not  its  import — liut  I  heard  the  word  Darius,  and  I  was 
iu  the  midst  of  Daniel.  All  feeling  was  absorbed  in 
vision.  Gorgeous  vests,  gardens,  palaces,  princesses, 
passed  before  me.  I  knew  not  players.  I  was  in  Perse- 
polis  for  the  time,  and  the  biu'ning  idol  of  their  devotion 
almost  couA'erted  me  into  a  worshipper.  I  was  awe- 
struck, and  believed  those  significations  to  be  something- 
more  than  elemental  fires.  It  was  all  enchantment  and 
a  dream.  No  such  pleasm'e  has  since  Aasited  me  but  in 
dreams. — Harlequin's  invasion  followed ;  where,  I  remem- 
ber, the  transformation  of  the  magistrates  into  reverend 
beldams  seemed  to  me  a  piece  of  grave  historic  justice, 
and  the  tailor  carrying  his  own  head  to  be  as  sober  a 
verity  as  the  legend  of  St.  Denys. 

The  next  \Aay  to  which  I  was  taken  was  the  Lady  of 
the  Manor,  of  which,  with  the  exception  of  some  scenery, 
very  faint  traces  are  left  in  .my  memory.  It  was  followed 
by  a  pantomime,  called  Lun's  Ghost — a  satiric  touch,  I 


112  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

apprehend,  upon  Rich,  not  long  since  dead — hut  to  my 
apprehension  (too  sincere  for  satire),  Lun  was  as  remote 
a  piece  of  anticpiity  as  Lud — the  father  of  a  line  of  Har- 
lequins— transmitting  liis  dagger  of  lath  (the  wooden 
scei)tre)  through  countless  ages.  I  saw  the  primeval 
Slotley  come  from  his  silent  tomb  in  a  ghastly  vest  of 
white  patchwork,  hke  the  apparition  of  a  dead  rainbow. 
So  Hark'quins  (tliought  I)  look  when  they  are  dead. 

My  tliird  pkiy  followed  in  quick  succession.  It  was 
the  Way  of  the  World.  I  think  I  must  have  sat  at  it  as 
grave  as  a  judge  ;  for  I  remember  the  liysteric  affectations 
of  good  Lady  Wishfort  affected  me  like  some  solemn  tragic 
passion.  Robinson  Cnisoe  followed ;  in  which  Crusoe, 
man  Friday,  and  the  parrot,  were  as  good  and  authentic 
as  in  the  story. — The  clownery  and  pantaloouery  of  these 
pantomimes  have  (dean  passed  out  of  my  head.  I  believe, 
I  no  more  laughed  at  them,  than  at  the  same  age  I  should 
have  been  disposed  to  laugh  at  the  grotesque  Gothic  heads 
(seeming  to  me  tlnm  replete  with  devout  meaning)  that 
gape  and  grin,  in  stone  around  the  inside  of  the  old  Round 
Church  (my  church)  of  the  Templars. 

I  saw  these  plays  in  the  season  1781-2,  when  I  w^as 
from  six  to  seven  years  old.  After  the  intervention  of 
six  or  seven  other  years  (for  at  school  all  play-going  was 
inhibited)  I  again  entered  the  doors  of  a  theatre.  That 
old  Artaxerxes  evening  had  never  done  ringing  in  my 
fancy.  I  expected  the  same  feelings  to  come  again  wdth 
the  same  occasion.  But  we  differ  from  ourselves  less  at 
sixty  and  sixteen,  than  the  latter  does  from  six.  In  that 
interval  what  had  I  not  lost  !  At  the  first  period  I  knew 
nothing,  understood  nothing,  discriminated  nothing.  I 
felt  all,  loved  all,  wondered  all — 

Was  nourished,  I  could  not  tell  how — 

I  had  left  the  temple  a  devotee,  and  was  retiu-ned  a 
rationalist.  The  same  things  were  there  materially;  but 
the  emblem,  the  reference,  was  gone  ! — The  green  curtain 
was  no  longer  a  veil,  drawn  between  two  worlds,  the  im- 


MODERN  GALLANTRY.  113 

folding  of  whicli  was  to  bring  back  past  ages,  to  i)reseut 
a  "royal  ghost," — but  a  certain  quantity  of  green  baize, 
which  was  to  sejDarate  the  audience  for  a  given  time  from 
certain  of  their  fellow-men  who  were  to  come  forward 
and  pretend  those  parts.  The  lights — the  orchestra  lights 
— came  up  a  clumsy  machinery.  The  first  ring,  and  the 
second  ring,  was  now  but  a  trick  of  the  prompter's  bell 
— which  had  been,  like  the  note  of  the  cuckoo,  a  phantom 
of  a  voice,  no  hand  seen  or  guessed  at  which  ministered 
to  its  warnmg.  The  actors  were  men  and  women  painted. 
I  thought  the  feult  was  in  them ;  but  it  was  in  myself, 
and  the  alteration  which  those  many  centuries — of  six 
short  twelvemontlis — had  wrought  in  me. — Perhaps  it 
was  fortimate  for  me  that  the  play  of  the  evening  was 
but  an  indifferent  comedy,  as  it  gave  me  time  to  crop 
some  imreasonable  expectations,  which  might  have  inter- 
fered with  the  genuine  emotions  with  which  I  was  soon 
after  enabled  to  enter  upon  the  first  ajipearance  to  me  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  in  Isabella.  Comparison  and  retrospection 
soon  jielded  to  the  present  attraction  of  the  scene ;  and 
the  theatre  became  to  me,  upon  a  new  stock,  the  most 
deliglitful  of  recreations. 


MODERN  GALLANTRY. 

In  comparing  modern  witli  ancient  manners,  we  are 
pleased  to  compliment  ourselves  upon  the  point  of  gal- 
lantry; a  certain  obsequiousness,  or  deferential  respect, 
which  we  are  supposed  to  pay  to  females,  as  females. 

I  shall  beheve  that  this  i)rinciple  actuates  our  conduct, 
when  I  can  forget,  that  in  the  nineteenth  ceutiuy  of  the 
era  from  which  we  date  our  civility,  we  are  but  just  be- 
ginning to  leave  off  the  very  frequent  practice  of  whip- 
ping females  in  public,  in  common  with  the  coarsest  male 
offenders. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  influential,  when  I  can  sluit 
I 


114  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

my  eyes  to  the  f;ict  that  in  England  women  are  still  occa- 
sionally— hanged. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  actresses  are  no  longer  sul> 
ject  to  be  hissed  off  a  stage  by  gentlemen. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  Doriniant  hands  a  fish-wife 
across  the  kennel ;  or  assists  the  ajiple-woman  to  pick  up 
her  wandering  fruit,  which  some  uiducky  dray  has  just 
dissipated. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  the  Dorimants  in  humbler 
life,  who  would  he  thought  in  their  way  notable  adepts 
in  this  refinement,  shall  act  upon  it  in  places  Avhere  they 
are  not  known,  or  think  themselves  not  observed — when 
I  shall  see  the  traveller  for  some  rich  tradesman  part 
with  his  admired  box-coat,  to  spread  it  over  the  defence- 
less shoulders  of  the  poor  woman,  who  is  passing  to  her 
jjarisli  on  the  roof  of  the  same  stage-coach  with  him, 
drenched  in  the  rain — when  I  shall  no  longer  see  a  woman 
standing  up  in  the  pit  of  a  London  theatre,  till  she  is  sick 
and  faint  with  the  exertion,  with  men  about  her,  seated 
at  their  ease,  and  jeering  at  her  distress ;  till  one,  that 
seems  to  have  more  manners  or  conscience  than  the  rest, 
significantly  declares  "  she  should  be  welcome  to  his  seat, 
if  she  were  a  little  yoimger  and  handsomer."  Place  this 
dapper  warehouseman,  or  that  rider,  in  a  circle  of  their 
own  female  acquaintance,  and  you  shall  confess  you  have 
not  seen  a  politer-bred  man  in  Lothbury. 

Lastly,  I  shall  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  some  such 
principle  influencing  om'  conduct,  when  more  than  one- 
half  of  tlie  drudgery  and  coarse  servitude  of  the  world 
shall  cease  to  be  performed  by  women. 

Until  that  day  comes  I  shall  never  believe  this  boasted 
point  to  ho  aiiytliing  more  than  a  conventional  fiction ;  a 
pageant  got  up  lietween  the  sexes,  in  a  certain  rank,  and 
at  a  certain  time  of  life,  in  Avhich  both  find  their  account 
equally. 

I  shall  be  even  disposed  to  i-ank  it  among  the  salutary 
fictions  of  life,  when  in  polite  circles  I  shall  see  the  same 
attentions  paid  to  age  as  to  youth,  to  homely  features  as 


MODERN  GALLANTKY.  115 

to  handsome,  to  coarse  complexions  as  to  clear — to  the 
woman,  as  she  is  a  woman,  not  as  she  is  a  beauty,  a  for- 
tune, or  a  title. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  something  more  than  a  name, 
when  a  well-dressed  gentleman  in  a  well-dressed  company 
can  advert  to  the  topic  ai  female  old  age  without  exciting, 
and  intending  to  excite,  a  sneer : — when  the  phrases 
"  antiquated  -sdi-ginity,"  and  such  a  one  has  "  overetood 
her  market,"  pronoimced  in  good  company,  shall  raise 
immediate  offence  in  man,  or  woman,  that  shall  hear  them 
spoken. 

Joseph  Paice,  of  Bread-sti-eet-hill,  merchant,  and  one 
of  the  Directors  of  the  South  Sea  comjjany — the  same  to 
whom  Edwards,  the  Shakspeare  commentator,  has  ad- 
dressed a  fine  sonnet — was  the  only  pattern  of  consistent 
gallantry  I  have  met  with.  He  took  me  under  his  shelter 
at  an  early  age,  and  bestowed  some  pains  upon  me.  I 
owe  to  his  precepts  and  example  whatever  there  is  of  the 
man  of  business  (and  that  is  not  much)  in  my  composi- 
tion. It  was  not  his  fault  that  I  did  not  profit  more. 
Though  bred  a  Presbyterian,  and  brought  up  a  merchant, 
he  was  the  finest  gentleman  of  his  time.  He  had  not 
one  system  of  attention  to  females  in  the  di'awing-room, 
and  another  in  the  shop,  or  at  the  stall.  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  made  no  distinction.  But  he  never  lost  sight  of 
sex,  or  overlooked  it  in  the  casualties  of  a  disadvantageous 
situation.  I  have  seen  him  stand  bareheaded — smile  if 
you  please — to  a  jjoor  seiTant-girl,  while  she  has  been 
inquiiiug  of  him  the  way  to  some  street — in  such  a  pos- 
ture of  imforced  civihty,  as  neither  to  embarrass  her  in 
the  acceptance,  nor  himself  in  the  offer,  of  it.  He  was 
no  dangler,  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the  word,  after 
women  ;  but  he  reverenced  and  upheld,  in  every  form  in 
which  it  came  before  him,  womanhood.  I  have  seen  him 
— nay,  smile  not — tenderly  escorting  a  market-woman, 
whom  he  had  encountered  in  a  shower,  exalting  his  vun- 
brella  over  her  poor  basket  of  fruit,  that  it  might  receive 
no  damage,  with  as  much  carefulness  as  if  she  had  been 


116  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

a  countess.  To  the  reverend  form  of  Female  Eld  he 
would  yield  the  wall  (though  it  were  to  an  ancient  beggar- 
woman)  with  more  ceremony  than  we  can  afford  to  show 
our  grandams.  He  was  the  Preux  Chevalier  of  Age ; 
the  Sir  Calidore,  or  Sir  Tristan,  to  those  who  have  no 
Oalidores  or  Tristans  to  defend  them.  The  roses,  that  had 
long  faded  thence,  still  bloomed  for  him  in  those  withered 
and  yellow  cheeks. 

He  was  never  married,  but  in  his  youth  he  paid  his 
addresses  to  the  beautiful  Susan  Winstanley — old  Win- 
stanley's  daughter  of  Clai)ton — who  dying  in  tlie  early 
days  of  their  courtship,  confirmed  in  him  the  resolution 
of  perpetual  bachclorsliip.  It  was  during  theu*  short 
courtship,  he  told  me,  that  he  had  been  one  day  treating 
his  mistress  with  a  profusion  of  civil  speeches — the  com- 
mon gallantries — to  which  kind  of  thing  she  had  hitherto 
manifested  no  repugnance — biit  in  this  instance  with  no 
effect.  He  could  not  obtain  from  her  a  decent  acknow- 
ledgment in  return.  She  rather  seemed  to  resent  his 
compliments.  He  could  not  set  it  down  to  caprice,  for 
the  lady  had  always  shown  herself  above  that  littleness. 
When  he  ventm'ed  on  the  following  day,  finding  her  a 
little  lietter  humoured,  to  expostidate  with  her  on  her 
coldness  of  yesterday,  she  confessed,  with  her  usual  frank- 
ness, that  she  had  no  sort  of  dislike  to  his  attentions ; 
that  she  could  even  endure  some  high-fiowu  com])liments  ; 
that  a  young  woman  placed  in  her  situation  had  a  right 
to  expect  all  sorts  of  civil  things  said  to  her ;  that  she 
hoped  she  could  digest  a  dose  of  adulation,  short  of  insin- 
cerity, with  as  little  injury  to  her  humility  as  most  young 
women  ;  but  that — a  little  before  he  had  commenced  his 
compliments — she  had  overheard  him  by  accident,  in 
rather  rough  language,  rating  a  yoiuig  woman,  who  had 
not  brought  home  his  cravats  quite  to  the  appointed  time, 
and  she  thought  to  herscslf,  "  As  I  am  Miss  Sasan  Win- 
stanley, and  a  yoimg  lady — a  reputed  beaiity,  and  known 
to  be  a  fortune — I  can  have  my  choice  of  the  finest 
speeches  from  the  mouth  of  this  very  fine  gentleman  who 


MODERN  GALLANTRY.  117 

is  com-tiiifj  me— but  if  I  had  lieen  poor  I\Iary  Such-a-one 
(iiaming  the  milliner), — aud  had  foiled  of  bringiuo;  home 
the  cravats  to  the  appointed  hoiir — tht)ugh  perhaps  I  had 
sat  up  half  the  night  to  forward  them — what  sort  of  com- 
pliments should  I  have  received  then  ■? — And  my  woman's 
pride  came  to  my  assistance ;  and  I  thought,  that  if  it 
were  only  to  do  me  honour,  a  female,  like  myself,  might 
have  received  handsomer  usage ;  and  I  was  determined 
not  to  accept  any  fine  speeches  to  the  compromise  of  that 
sex,  the  belonging  to  which  was  after  all  my  strongest 
claim  and  title  to  them." 

I  think  the  lady  discovered  both  generosity,  and  a 
just  way  of  thinking,  in  this  rebiie  which  she  gave  her 
lover ;  and  I  have  sometimes  imagined,  that  the  uncom- 
mon strain  of  courtesy,  which  through  life  regulated  the 
actions  and  behaviour  of  my  friend  towards  all  of  woman- 
kind indiscriminately,  owed  its  happy  origin  to  this  season- 
able lesson  from  the  lips  of  his  lamented  mistress. 

I  wish  the  whole  female  world  would  entertain  the 
same  notion  of  these  things  that  Miss  Winstanlej'  showed. 
Then  we  should  see  something  of  the  spirit  of  consistent 
gallantry ;  and  no  longer  witness  the  anomaly  of  the  same 
man — a  pattern  of  true  politeness  to  a  wife — of  cold  con- 
tempt, or  rudeness,  to  a  sister — the  idolater  of  his  female 
mistress — the  disparager  and  despiser  of  his  no  less  female 
aunt,  or  imfortmiate — still  female — maiden  cousin.  Just 
so  much  respect  as  a  woman  derogates  from  her  own  sex, 
in  whatever  condition  placed — her  hand-maid,  or  depend- 
ent— she  deserves  to  have  diminished  from  herself  on 
that  score;  and  probal)ly  will  feel  the  diminution,  when 
youth,  aud  beauty,  and  advantages,  not  inseparable  from 
sex,  shall  lose  of  their  attraction.  What  a  woman  should 
demand  of  a  man  in  courtship,  or  after  it,  is  first — resj)ect 
for  her  as  she  is  a  woman ; — and  next  to  that — to  be 
respected  by  him  above  all  other  women.  But  let  her 
stand  upon  her  female  character  as  upon  a  foimdation  ; 
and  let  the  attentions,  incident  to  individual  preference, 
be  so  many  pretty  additameuts  and  ornaments — as  many. 


118  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

and  as  fanciful,  as  you  jilease — to  that  main  structui'e. 
Let  her  first  lesson  be  with  sweet  Susan  Winstanley — to 
reverence  her  sex. 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE. 

I  WAS  born,  and  passed  the  fii-st  seven  yeai-.s  of  my  life, 
in  the  Temjjle.  Its  church,  its  halls,  its  ,s,aJ''^c'i'S  its 
fountains,  its  river,  I  had  almost  said — for  in  those  yoimg 
years,  what  was  this  king  of  rivers  to  me  but  a  stream 
that  watered  om-  pleasant  places  ? — these  are  of  my  oldest 
recollections.  I  repeat,  to  this  day,  no  verses  to  myself 
more  frequently,  or  with  kindlier  emotion,  than  those  of 
Spenser,  where  he  speaks  of  this  spot : — 

There  wbeii  they  came,  whereas  those  bricky  towers, 
The  which  on  Tliemmes  brode  aged  back  doth  ride, 
Where  uow  the  studious  lawyers  have  their  bowers, 
There  whylome  wout  the  Teiupler  knights  to  bide, 
Till  they  decayed  through  priile. 

Indeed,  it  is  the  most  elegant  spot  in  the  metropolis. 
What  a  transition  for  a  countryman  visiting  London  for 
the  fii'st  time — the  passing  from  the  crowded  Strand  or 
Fleet  Street,  by  unexpected  avenues,  into  its  magnificent 
amjjle  squares,  its  classic  green  recesses  !  What  a  cheer- 
ful, liberal  look  hath  that  portion  of  it,  which,  from 
three  sides,  overlooks  the  greater  garden  ;  that  goodly  pile 

Of  building  strong,  albeit  of  Paper  hight, 

confronting  with  massy  contrast,  the  lighter,  older,  more 
fantastically-shrouded  one,  named  of  Harcom't,  with  the 
cheerful  Crown-Office-row  (place  of  my  kindly  engendm^e), 
right  opjiosite  the  stately  stream,  which  washes  the  garden- 
foot  with  her  yet  scarcely  trade-pf)lluted  waters,  and  seems 
but  just  weaned  from  her  Twickenham  Naiades  !  a  man 
would  give  something  to  have  been  born  in  such  places. 
What  a  collegiate  aspect  has  that  fine  Elizabethan  hall, 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.    119 

where  the  fouutaiu  plays,  which  I  have  made  to  rise  and 
M\,  how  many  times  !  to  tlie  astoimdment  of  the  young 
m-chins,  my  contemporaries,  who,  not  being  able  to  giiess 
at  its  recondite  machinery,  were  almost  tempted  to  hail 
the  wondrous  work  as  magic  !  What  an  antique  air  had 
the  now  almost  effaced  sim-dials,  with  their  moral  in- 
scriptions, seeming  coevals  with  that  Tune  which  they 
measm-ed,  and  to  tal^e  theu-  revelations  of  its  flight 
immediately  from  heaven,  holding  correspondence  with 
the  foimtain  of  light !  How  woidd  the  dark  line  steal 
imperceptibly  on,  watched  by  the  eye.  of  childhood,  eager 
to  detect  its  movement,  never  catched,  nice  as  an  evan- 
escent cloud,  or  the  iii-st  arres'ts  of  sleep  ! 

All  I  yet  (loth  beauty  like  a  dial  hand 

Steal  from  his  figure,  aud  no  pace  iierceived  ! 

What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponderous  em- 
bowelmeuts  of  lead  and  brass,  its  pert  or  solemn  dulnes? 
of  conmiunication,  compared  with  the  simple  altar-like 
structm-e  and  silent  heart-language  of  the  old  dial !  It 
stood  as  the  garden  god  of  Christian  gardens.  Why  is  it 
almost  everywhere  vanished  ?  If  its  business -use  be 
superseded  by  more  elaborate  inventions,  its  moral  uses, 
its  beauty,  might  have  pleaded  for  its  continuance.  It 
spoke  of  moderate  labours,  of  pleasures  not  protracted 
after  simset,  of  temperance,  and  good  hoiu^.  It  was  the 
primitive  clock,  the  horologe  of  the  first  world.  Adam 
could  scarce  have  missed  it  in  Paradise.  It  was  the 
measm-e  appropriate  for  sweet  plants  and  flowers  to  spring 
by,  for  the  birtls  to  apportion  their  silver  warbUngs  by, 
for  flocks  to  pasture  and  be  led  to  fold  by.  The  shepherd 
"canned  it  out  quaintly  in  the  sim^"  and,  turning  philo 
sopher  by  the  very  ticcupation,  provided  it  with  mottoes 
more  touching  than  tombstones.  It  was  a  pretty  device 
of  the  gardener,  recorded  by  Mai-vell,  wIki,  in  the  days  of 
artificial  gardening,  made  a  dial  out  of  herbs  and  flowers. 
I  must  quote  his  vei-ses  a  little  higher  up,  for  they  are 
fidl,  as  all  his  serious  poetiy  was,  of  a  mtty  delicacy. 


120  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

They  will  not  come  in  awkwardly,  I  hope,  in  a  talk  of 
fountains  and  sun-dials.  He  is  si^eaking  of  sweet  garden 
scenes  :  — 

Wliat  wondrous  life  is  this  I  lead  ! 

Ripe  ajiples  drop  aliout  my  head. 

The  luscious  clusters  of  the  vine 

Upon  my  mouth  do  crush  their  wine. 

The  nectarine,  and  curious  peach, 

Into  my  hands  themselves  do  reaeli. 

Stumbling  on  melons,  as  I  pass, 

Insnared  with  flowers,  I  fall  on  grass. 

Meanwhile  the  mind  from  pleasure  less 

Withdraws  into  its  happiness. 

The  mind,  that  ocean,  where  each  kind 

Does  straight  its  own  resemblance  fiml ; 

Yet  it  creates,  transcending  these, 

Far  otlier  worlds  and  other  seas  ; 

Annihilating  all  that's  made 

To  a  green  thought  in  a  green  shade. 

Here  at  the  fountain's  sliding  foot 

Or  at  some  fruit-tree's  mossy  root, 

Casting  the  body's  vest  aside, 

My  soul  into  the  boughs  does  glide  ; 

There,  like  a  bird,  it  sits  and  sings, 

Then  whets  and  claps  its  silver  wings, 

And,  till  prejjared  for  longer  flight, 

Waves  in  its  plumes  the  various  light 

How  well  the  skilful  gardener  drew 

Of  flowers  and  herbs,  this  dial  new 

Where,  from  above,  the  milder  sun 

Does  through  a  fragrant  zodiac  run  : 

And,  as  it  works,  the  industrious  bee 

Computes  its  time  as  well  as  we. 

How  could  such  sweet  and  wholesome  hours 

Be  reckoned,  but  with  herbs  and  flowers  ? ' 

The  artificial  fountains  of  the  metropolis  are,  in  like 
manner,  fast  vanishing.  Most  of  them  arc  (\rm\  up  or 
l)rickcd  over.  Yet,  where  one  is  left,  as  in  that  little 
green  nook  behind  the  South-Sea  Ht)use,  Avhat  a  freshness 
it  gives  to  the  dreary  pile  !  Four  little  Avinged  marble 
boys  used  to  play  their  virgin  fancies,  sjiouting  out  ever 
fresh  streams  from  their  inncjcent-wauton  lips  in  the  square 

1  From  a  copy  of  verses  entitled  "  The  Garden." 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  121 

of  Lincoln's  Inn,  when  I  was  no  bigger  than  they  were 
figiu-ed.  They  are  gone,  and  the  sjiring  choked  np.  The 
fashion,  they  tell  me,  is  gone  by,  and  these  things  are 
esteemed  childish.  Why  not,  then,  gratify  children,  by 
letting  them  stand  1  Lawyers,  I  suppose,  were  children 
once.  They  are  awakening  images  to  them  at  least.  Why 
must  everything  smack  of  man,  and  mannish  ?  Is  the 
world  all  grown  up  1  Is  childhood  dead  1  Or  is  there 
not  in  the  bosoms  of  the  -nasest  and  the  best  some  of  the 
child's  heart  left,  to  respond  to  its  earliest  enchantments  ? 
The  figiu"es  were  grotescpie.  Are  the  stift'-wigged  living 
figm-es,  that  still  tiitter  and  chatter  about  tliat  area,  less 
Gothic  in  appearance  1  or  is  the  splutter  of  theu-  hot 
rhetoric  one-half  so  refreshing  and  innocent  as  the  little 
cool  pla\-ful  streams  those  exploded  cheiidis  uttered  ? 

They  have  lately  gothicised  the  entrance  to  the  Inner 
Temple-hall,  and  the  libraiy  front ;  to  assimilate  them,  I 
suppose,  to  the  body  of  the  hall,  which  they  do  not  at  all 
resemble.  What  is  become  of  the  winged  horse  that  stood 
over  the  former  ?  a  stately  arms !  and  who  has  removed 
those  frescoes  of  the  Virtues,  which  Italianised  the  end 
of  the  Paper-buildings  I — my  first  hmt  of  allegoiy  !  They 
nuist  accoimt  to  me  for  these  things,  which  I  miss  so 
greatly. 

The  terrace  is,  indeed,  left,  which  we  used  to  caU  the 
parade ;  but  the  traces  are  passed  away  of  the  footsteps 
which  made  its  pavement  a-^-ful  !  It  is  become  common 
and  profane.  Tlae  old  benchers  had  it  almost  sacred  to 
themselves,  in  the  forepart  of  the  day  at  least.  They 
might  not  be  sided  or  jostled.  Their  air  and  dress 
asserted  the  parade.  You  left  wide  spaces  betwixt  you 
when  you  passed  them.     We  walk  on  even  terms  with 

their  successors.     The  roguish  eye  of  J 11,  ever  ready 

to  be  delivered  of  a  jest,  almost  invites  a  stranger  to  vie 
a  repartee  with  it.  But  what  insolent  familiar  diu'st 
have  mated  Thomas  Coventry? — whose  person  was  a 
quatb-ate,  his  step  massy  and  elephantine,  his  face  square 
as  the  lion's,  his  gait  peremptoiy  and  path-keeping,  in- 


122  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

(livertible  from  his  way  as  a  moving  column,  the  scare- 
crow of  liis  inferiors,  tlic  browbeater  of  equals  and 
superiors,  who  made  a  solitude  of  children  wherever  he 
came,  for  they  fled  his  insufterable  presence,  as  they 
would  have  shiumed  an  Elisha  bear.  His  growl  was  as 
thunder  in  their  ears,  whether  he  spake  to  them  in  mirth 
or  in  rebuke ;  his  invitatoiy  notes  being,  indeed,  of  all, 
the  most  repulsive  and  horrid.  Clouds  of  snuff,  aggravat- 
ing the  natural  terrors  of  his  speech,  broke  from  each 
majestic  nostril,  darkening  the  air.  He  took  it,  not  by 
pinches,  but  a  palmful  at  once, — diving  for  it  under 
the  mighty  flajis  of  his  old-fashioned  waistcoat  pocket ; 
his  waistcoat  red  and  angry,  his  coat  dark  rappee,  tinc- 
tured by  dye  original,  and  by  adjimcts,  with  buttons  of 
obsolete  gold.      And  so  he  paced  the  terrace. 

By  his  side  a  milder  form  was  sometimes  to  be  seen ; 
the  pensive  gentility  of  Samuel  Salt.  They  were  coevals, 
and  had  nothing  but  that  and  their  benchership  in  com- 
mon. In  politics  Salt  was  a  whig,  and  Coventry  a  staunch 
tory.  Many  a  sarcastic  growl  did  the  latter  cast  out — 
for  Coventry  had  a  rough  spinous  humour — at  the  political 
confederates  of  his  associate,  which  rebounded  from  the 
gentle  bosom  of  the  latter  like  cannon-balls  from  wool. 
You  coidd  not  ruffle  Samuel  Salt. 

S.  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  very  clever  man,  and  of 
excellent  discernment  in  the  chamber  "practice  of  the  law. 
I  suspect  his  knowledge  did  not  amount  to  much.  When 
a  case  of  difficult  disposition  of  money,  testamentary  or 
otherwise,  came  before  him,  he  ordinarily  handed  it  over, 
with  a  few  instructions,  to  his  man  Lovel,  who  was  a  qiuck 
little  fellow,  and  would  despatch  it  out  of  hand  by  the 
light  of  natural  imderstanding,  of  which  he  had  an  un- 
common share.  It  was  incredible  what  repute  for  talents 
S.  enjoyed  by  tlie  mere  trick  of  gravity.  He  was  a  shy 
man  ;  a  child  might  pose  him  in  a  minute — indolent  and 
procrastinating  to  the  last  degree.  Yet  men  would  give 
him  credit  for  vast  application,  in  spite  of  himself  He 
was  not  to  be  trusted  with  himself  with  impunity.     He 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  123 

never  dressed  for  a  dinner  party  but  he  forgot  his  sword 
— they  wore  swords  then — or  some  other  necessary  part  of 
liis  equipage.  Lovel  had  his  eye  upon  him  on  all  these 
occasions,  and  ordinarily  gave  him  his  cue.  If  there  was 
anything  which  he  could  speak  miseasonal)ly,  he  was 
sure  to  do  it. — He  was  to  dine  at  a  relative's  of  the 
unfortimate  Miss  Blandy  on  the  day  of  her  execution ; — 
and  L.,  who  had  a  waiy  foresight  of  his  probable  hallucina- 
tions, before  he  set  out  schooled  him,  with  great  anxiety, 
not  in  any  possible  manner  to  allude  to  her  story  that 
day.  S.  promised  faithfully  to  observe  the  injunction. 
He  had  not  been  seated  in  the  parlour,  where  the  com- 
pany was  expecting  the  dinner  simimons,  four  minutes, 
when,  a  pause  in  the  conversation  ensuing,  he  got  up, 
looked  out  of  window,  and  pidling  down  his  ruffles — an 
ordinary  motion  with  him — obsen'ed,  "  it  was  a  gloomy 
day,"  and  added,  "  Miss  Blandy  must  be  hanged  by  this 
time,  I  suppose."  Instances  of  this  sort  were  perpetual. 
Yet  S.  was  thought  by  some  of  the  greatest  men  of  his 
time  a  fit  person  to  be  cousidted,  not  alone  in  matters 
pertaining  to  the  law,  but  in  the  ordinary  niceties  and 
embarrassments  of  conduct — from  force  of  manner  entii-ely. 
He  never  laughed.  He  had  the  same  good  fortime  among 
the  female  world, — was  a  known  toast  with  the  ladies, 
and  one  or  two  are  said  to  have  died  for  love  of  him — I 
suppose,  because  he  never  trifled  or  talked  gallantly  with 
them,  or  paid  them,  indeed,  hardly  common  attentions. 
He  had  a  fine  face  and  person,  but  wanted,  methought, 
the  spirit  that  should  have  shown  them  ott'  with  advantage 
to  the  women.     His  eye  lacked  lustre. — Not  so,  thought 

Susan  P ;  who,  at  the  advanced  age  of  sixty,  was 

seen,  in  the  cold  evening  time,  unaccompanied,  wetting 

the  pavement  of  B d  Row,  with  tears  that  fell  in 

drops  which  might  be  heard,  because  her  friend  had  died 
that  day — he,  whom  she  had  piu'sued  with  a  hopeless 
passion  for  the  last  forty  years — a  passion  which  years 
coidd  not  extinguish  or  abate ;  nor  the  long-resolved,  yet 
gently-enforced,  puttings  off  of  unrelenting  bachelorhood 


124  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

dissuade  from  its  cherished  purpose.     Mild  Susan  P , 

thou  hast  now  thy  friend  in  heaven  ! 

Thomas  Coventry  was  a  cadet  of  the  noble  family  of 
that  name.  He  passed  his  youth  in  contracted  circum- 
stances, which  gave  him  early  those  parsimonious  habits 
whicli  in  after  life  never  forsook  him ;  so  that  with  one 
windfall  or  another,  about  the  time  I  knew  him,  he  was 
master  of  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  poimds ;  nor  did  he 
look  or  Avalk  worth  a  moidore  less.  He  lived  in  a  gloomy 
house  opposite  the  pump  in  8erjeant's-inn,  Fleet-street. 
J.,  the  counsel,  is  doing  self-imjjosed  penance  in  it,  for 
what  reason  I  divine  not,  at  this  day.  0.  had  an  agree- 
able seat  at  North  Cray,  where  he  seldom  spent  above  a 
day  or  two  at  a  time  in  the  smnmer;  but  preferred, 
diu-ing  the  hot  months,  standing  at  his  window  in  this 
damp,  close,  well -like  mansion,  to  watch,  as  he  said, 
"  tlie  maitls  draAving  water  all  day  long."  I  suspect  he 
had  his  within-door  reasons  for  the  preference.  Hie  cumts 
et  arma  fiierc.  He  might  think  his  treasures  more  safe. 
His  house  had  the  aspect  of  a  strong  box.  C.  was  a 
close  hunks — a  hoarder  rather  than  a  miser — or,  if  a 
miser,  none  of  the  mad  Elwes  breed,  who  have  brought 
discredit  upon  a  character  which  cannot  exist  without 
certain  admirable  points  of  steadiness  and  unity  of  pm- 
pose.  One  may  hate  a  true  miser,  but  cannot,  I  suspect, 
so  easily  desjjise  him.  By  taking  care  of  the  pence  he  is 
often  enabled  to  part  witli  the  pounds,  upon  a  scale  that 
leaves  us  careless  generous  fellows  halting  at  an  im- 
measiu'able  distance  behind.  C.  gave  away  30,000^.  at 
once  in  his  lifetime  to  a  blind  charity.  His  house- 
keeping was  severely  looked  after,  but  he  kept  the  table 
of  a  gentleman.  He  would  know  who  came  in  and  who 
went  out  of  his  house,  but  his  kitchen  chimney  was  never 
suffered  to  freeze. 

Salt  was  his  opposite  in  this,  as  in  all — never  knew 
what  he  was  worth  in  the  worlil ;  and  having  but  a  com- 
petency for  his  rank,  which  his  indolent  habits  were 
little  calculated  to  improve,  might  have  suffered  severely 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  125 

if  he  had  not  had  honest  peojile  about  him.  Lovel  took 
care  of  everything.  He  was  at  once  his  clerk,  his  good 
servant,  his  dresser,  his  friend,  his  "  flapper,"  his  gnide, 
stojj-watch,  audit<ir,  treasurer.  He  did  nothing  without 
consulting  Lovel,  or  foiled  in  anything  without  expecting 
and  fearing  his  admonishing.  He  put  himself  almost  too 
much  in  his  hands,  had  they  not  been  the  piu-est  in  the 
world.  He  resigned  his  title  almost  to  respect  as  a 
master,  if  L.  coidd  ever  have  forgotten  for  a  moment  that 
he  was  a  servant. 

I  knew  this  Lovel.  He  was  a  man  of  an  incorrigible 
and  losing  honesty.  A  good  fellow  withal,  and  "  woidd 
strike."  In  the  cause  of  the  oppressed  he  never  considered 
inequalities,  or  calculated  the  number  of  his  opponents. 
He  once  wrested  a  sword  out  of  the  hand  of  a  man  of 
quality  that  had  drawn  upon  him,  antl  pommelled  him 
severely  ^vith  the  hilt  of  it.  The  swordsman  had  offered 
insult  to  a  female — an  occasion  upon  which  no  odds 
against  him  coidd  have  prevented  the  interference  of 
Lovel.  He  would  stand  next  day  bareheaded  to  the 
same  person  modestly  to  excuse  his  interference — for  L. 
never  forgot  rank  where  something  better  was  not  con- 
cerned. L.  was  the  liveliest  little  fellow  l)reathing,  had 
a  face  as  gay  as  Garrick's,  Avhom  he  was  said  gi-eatly  to 
resemble  (I  have  a  portrait  of  him  which  confirais  it), 
possessed  a  fine  turn  for  humorous  poetry — next  to 
Swift  and  Prior — moulded  heads  in  clay  or  plaster  of 
Paris  to  admiration,  by  the  dint  of  natural  genius 
merely ;  tm-ned  cribbage  boards,  and  such  small  cabinet 
toys,  to  perfection  ;  took  a  hand  at  quadrille  or  bowls 
with  equal  facility ;  made  pimch  better  than  any  man  of 
his  degree  in  England ;  had  the  merriest  quips  and  con- 
ceits ;  and  was  altogether  as  brimful  of  rogueries  and 
inventions  as  you  could  desu'e.  He  was  a  brother  of  the 
angle,  moreover,  and  just  such  a  free,  hearty,  honest 
companion  as  Mr.  Izaak  Walton  would  have  chosen  to  go 
a-fishing  with.  I  saw  him  in  his  old  age  and  the  decay 
of  his  faculties,  palsy-smitten,  in  the  last  sad  stage  of 


126  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

human  weakness — "  a  remnant  most  forlorn  of  what  he 
was," — yet  even  then  his  eye  would  light  up  upon  the 
mention  of  his  favourite  Garrick.  He  was  greatest,  he 
would  say,  in  Bayes — "was  upon  the  stage  nearly 
throughout  the  whole  performance,  and  as  busy  as  a 
bee."  At  intervals,  too,  he  would  speak  of  his  former 
life,  and  how  he  came  up  a  little  boy  from  Lincoln,  to  go 
to  service,  and  how  his  mother  cried  at  parting  with  him, 
and  how  he  returned,  after  some  few  years'  absence,  in  his 
smart  new  livery,  to  see  her,  and  she  blest  herself  at  the 
change,  and  couhl  hardly  be  brouglit  to  believe  that  it 
was  "  her  own  bairn."  And  then,  the  excitement  sub- 
siding, he  would  weep,  till  I  have  \Aislied  that  sad  second- 
childhood  might  have  a  mother  still  to  lay  its  head  ujiou 
her  lap.  But  the  common  mother  of  us  all  in  no  long 
time  after  received  him  gently  into  hers. 

With  Coventry  and  with  Salt,  in  theii"  walks  upon 
the  terrace,  most  commonly  Peter  Pierson  Avould  join  to 
make  up  a  third.  They  did  not  walk  linked  arm-in- 
arm in  those  days — "as  now  our  stout  triumvirs  sweep 
the  streets,"  —  but  generally  with  both  hands  folded 
behind  them  for  state,  or  with  one  at  least  behind,  the 
other  carrying  a  cane.  P.  was  a  benevoleiit,  but  not  a 
prepossessing  man.  He  had  that  in  his  foce  which  you 
could  not  term  vmhapjiiness ;  it  rather  implied  an  incapa- 
city of  being  happy.  His  cheeks  were  colourless,  even 
to  whiteness.  His  look  was  uninviting,  resembling  (but 
without  his  soiu'ness)  that  of  our  great  jihilanthropist. 
I  know  that  he  did  good  acts,  but  I  could  never  make 
out  what  he  tvas.  Contemporary  with  these,  but  subordi- 
nate, was  Daines  Barrington — another  oddity — he  walked 
burly  and  square — in  imitation,  I  think,  of  Coventry — 
howbeit  he  attained  not  to  the  dignity  of  his  prototjqie. 
Nevertheless,  he  did  pretty  Avell,  upon  the  strength  of 
being  a  tolerable  anticpiarian,  and  having  a  brother  a 
bishop.  When  the  account  of  his  year's  ti'easurership 
came  to  be  audited,  the  following  singuLir  charge  was 
unanimously  disallowed  by  the  bench  :   "  Item,  disbursed 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  127 

Mr.  Allen,  the  gardener,  twenty  shillings  for  stuft'  to 
poison  the  sparrows,  hy  my  orders."  Next  to  him  was 
old  Barton — a  jolly  negation,  who  took  upon  him  the 
ordering  of  the  bills  of  fare  for  the  parliament  chamber, 
where  the  benchers  dine — answering  to  the  combination 
rooms  at  College — much  to  the  easement  of  his  less 
epicurean  brethren.  I  know  nothing  more  of  him. — 
Then  Read,  and  Twopenny — Read,  good-humom'cd  and 
personable — Twopenny,  good-humoured,  but  thin,  and 
felicitous  in  jests  upon  his  OAvn  figure.  If  T.  Avas  thin, 
Wharry  was  attenuated  and  fleeting.  Many  must  re- 
memlier  him  (for  he  was  rather  of  later  date)  and  his 
singidar  gait,  which  was  performed  by  three  steps  and  a 
jump  regidarly  succeeding.  The  steps  were  little  efforts, 
like  that  of  a  child  beginning  to  walk ;  the  jump  com- 
paratively vigorous,  as  a  foot  to  an  inch.  Where  he 
learned  this  figiu'e,  or  what  occasioned  it,  I  could  never 
discover.  It  was  neither  graceful  in  itself,  nor  seemed 
to  answer  the  piurpose  any  better  than  common  walking. 
The  extreme  tenuity  of  his  frame,  I  susiject,  set  him 
upon  it.  It  was  a  trial  of  poising.  Twopenny  woidd 
often  rally  him  upon  his  leanness,  and  hail  him  as 
Brother  Lusty ;  but  W.  had  no  relish  of  a  joke.  His 
features  were  spitefid.  I  have  heard  that  he  would 
pinch  his  cat's  ears  extremely  when  anything  had 
offended  him.  Jackson — the  omniscient  Jackson,  he  was 
called — was  of  this  period.  He  had  the  reputation  of 
possessing  more  multifarions  knowledge  than  any  man  of 
his  time.  He  was  the  Friar  Bacon  of  the  less  literate 
portion  of  the  Temph;.  I  remember  a  pleasant  passage 
of  the  cook  applying  to  him,  with  much  formality  of 
apology,  for  instnictions  how  to  write  down  edc/e  bone  of 
beef  in  his  bill  of  commons.  He  was  supposed  to  know, 
if  any  man  in  the  world  did.  He  decided  the  ortho- 
graphy to  be — as  I  have  given  it — fortifjnng  his  authority 
with  such  anatomical  reasons  as  dismissed  the  manciple 
(for  the  time)  learned  and  happy.  Some  do  spell  it  yet, 
perversely,  aiich  bone,   from  a  fanciful  resemblance  be- 


128  TJIE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

tweeu  its  shape  and  that  of  the  aspirate  so  denominated. 
I  had  ahnost  forgotten  Mingay  with  the  iron  hand — but 
he  was  somewhat  later.  He  had  lost  his  right  hand  by 
some  accident,  and  sui)plied  it  with  a  grappling-hook, 
which  he  wielded  with  a  tolerable  adroitness.  I  detected 
the  substitute  before  I  was  old  enough  to  reason  whether 
it  were  artificial  or  not.  I  remember  the  astonishment 
it  raised  in  me.  He  was  a  blustering,  loud-talking  per- 
son ;  and  I  reconciled  the  phenomenon  to  my  ideas  as  an 
emblem  of  power — somewhat  like  the  horns  in  the  fore- 
head of  Michael  Angelo's  Moses.  Baron  Maseres,  who 
walks  (or  did  till  very  lately)  in  the  costume  of  the  reign 
of  George  the  Second,  closes  my  imperfect  recollections  of 
the  old  benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple. 

Fantastic  forms,  whither  are  ye  fled  ?  Or,  if  the  like 
of  you  exist,  wliy  exist  they  no  more  for  me  1  Ye  inex- 
plicable, half- understood  appearances,  why  comes  in 
reason  to  tear  away  the  preternatm'al  mist,  bright  or 
gloomy,  that  enshrouded  you  ?  Why  make  ye  so  sorry  a 
figure  in  my  relation,  who  made  vip  to  me — to  my 
childish  eyes — the  mythology  of  the  Temple  1  In  those 
days  I  saw  Gods,  as  "  old  men  covered  with  a  mantle," 
walking  upon  the  earth.  Let  the  dreams  of  classic  idol- 
atry perish, — extinct  be  the  fairies  and  fairy  trumpery  of 
legendary  fabling,  in  the  heart  of  childhood  there  will, 
for  ever,  spring  up  a  well  of  innocent  or  wholesome 
superstition — the  seeds  of  exaggeration  will  be  busy 
there,  and  vital  —  from  every- day  forms  educing  the 
unknown  and  the  uncommon.  In  that  little  Goshen  there 
will  be  light  when  the  grown  world  flounders  about  in 
the  darkness  of  sense  and  materiality.  While  childhood, 
and  while  dreams,  reducing  childhood,  shall  be  left, 
imagination  shall  not  have  spread  her  holy  wings  totally 
to  fly  the  earth. 

P.S. — I  have  done  injustice  to  the  soft  shade  of 
Samuel  Salt.  See  what  it  is  to  trust  to  im]terfect 
memory,  and   the  erring  notices   of  childhood  !     Yet  I 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  129 

protest  I  always  thought  that  he  had  been  a  bachelor  ! 
This  gentleman,  R.  N.  informs  me,  married  yovuig,  and 
losing  his  lady  in  childbed,  within  the  first  year  of  their 
union,  fell  into  a  deep  melancholy,  from  the  effects  of 
which,  probably,  he  never  thoroughly  recovered.  In 
Avluit  a  new  light  does  this  place  his  rejectinn  (0  call  it 

by  a  gentler  name  !)  of  mild  Sasan  P ,  iinravelling 

into  beauty  certain  pecidiarities  of  this  very  shy  and 
retiring  character !  Henceforth  let  no  one  receive  the 
narratives  of  Elia  for  tnie  records  !  They  are,  in  trath, 
but  shadows  of  fact — verisimilitudes,  not  verities — or 
sitting  but  upon  the  remote  edges  and  outskirts  of 
history.  He  is  no  such  honest  chronicler  as  R.  N.,  and 
woidd  have  done  better  perhaps  to  have  consulted  that 
gentleman  before  he  sent  these  incondite  reminiscences  to 
press.  But  the  worthy  sub-treasm-er — who  respects  his 
old  and  his  new  masters — would  but  have  been  puzzled  at 
the  indecorous  liberties  of  Elia.  The  good  man  wots 
not,  peradventm'e,  of  the  licence  which  Magazines  have 
arrived  at  in  this  plain-speaking  age,  or  hardly  dreams  of 
their  existence  beyond  the  Gentleman's  —  his  fm'thest 
monthly  excursions  in  this  natm-e  having  been  long  con- 
fined to  the  holy  ground  of  honest  Ui-h(tn''s  obituary. 
May  it  be  long  before  his  own  name  shall  help  to  swell 
those  columns  of  imenvied  flattery  ! — Meantime,  O  ye 
New  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple,  cherish  him  kin<:Uy, 
for  he  is  himself  the  kindliest  of  human  creatiu'cs. 
Shoidd  infirmities  overtake  him — lie  is  yet  in  green  and 
vigorous  senility — make  allowances  for  them,  remember- 
ing that  "  ye  yovu'selves  are  old."  So  may  the  Winged 
Horse,  your  ancient  badge  and  cognizance,  still  flourish  ! 
so  may  futm-e  Hookers  and  Seldeus  illustrate  your  chm-ch 
and  chambers  !  so  may  the  sparrows,  in  default  of  more 
meludious  qiuristers,  impoisoned  hop  about  your  walks  ! 
so  may  the  fresh-coloured  and  cleanly  mu'sery-maid,  who, 
by  leave,  airs  her  playful  charge  in  yoiu*  stat(^ly  gardens, 
drop  her  prettiest  Idushing  courtesy  as  ye  pass,  reductive 
of  juvenescent  emotion  !  so  may  the  younkers  of  this 
K 


130  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

generation  eye  yon,  jiacing  your  stately  terrace,  with  the 
same  su^jerstitions  veneration  with  which  the  child  Elia 
gazed  on  the  Old  Worthies  that  solemnized  the  parade 
before  ye  ! 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT. 

The  custom  of  saying  grace  at  meals  had,  probably,  its 
origin  in  the  early  times  of  the  world,  and  the  hunter- 
state  of  man,  when  dinners  were  precarious  things,  and  a 
full  meal  was  something  more  than  a  common  blessing  ! 
when  a  belly-full  was  a  wind-fall,  and  looked  like  a  spe- 
cial providence.  In  the  shouts  and  triumphal  songs  with 
which,  after  a  season  of  sharp  abstinence,  a  lucky  booty 
of  deer's  or  goat's  flesh  would  naturally  be  ushered  home, 
existed,  perhaps,  the  germ  of  the  modern  grace.  It  is 
not  otherwise  easy  to  be  understood,  why  the  blessing  of 
food — the  act  of  eating — should  have  had  a  particular 
expression  of  thanksgiving  annexed  to  it,  distinct  from 
that  implied  and  silent  gratitude  with  which  we  are  ex- 
pected to  enter  upon  the  enjoyment  of  the  many  other 
various  gifts  and  good  things  of  existence. 

I  own  that  I  am  disposed  to  say  grace  upon  twenty 
other  occasions  in  the  course  of  the  day  besides  my  dinner. 
I  want  a  form  for  setting  out  u])on  a  pleasant  walk,  for 
a  moonlight  ramble,  for  a  friendly  meeting,  or  a  solved 
problem.  Why  have  we  none  for  books,  those  spiritual 
repasts — a  grace  before  Milton — a  grace  before  Shakspeare 
— a  devotional  exercise  proper  to  be  said  before  reading 
the  Fairy  Queen  ? — but  the  received  ritual  having  pre- 
scribed these  forms  to  the  solitary  ceremony  of  manduca- 
tion,  I  shall  confine  my  observations  to  the  experience 
which  I  have  had  of  the  grace,  properly  so  called ;  com- 
mending my  new  scheme  for  extension  to  a  niche  in 
the  grand  jihilosophical,  poetical,  and  perchance  in  j)ai-t 
heretical,   liturgy,   now  compiling  by  my  friend   Homo 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  J  31 

Humaiius,  for  the  use  of  a  certain  snug  congregation 
of  Utopian  Eabela3sian  Christians,  no  matter  where 
assembled. 

The  form,  then,  of  the  benediction  before  eating  has 
its  beauty  at  a  poor  man's  table,  or  at  the  simple  and  un- 
provocative  repast  of  children.  It  is  here  that  the  grace 
becomes  exceedingly  graceful.  The  indigent  man,  who 
hardly  knows  whether  he  shall  have  a  meal  the  next  day 
or  not,  sits  down  to  his  fare  with  a  jjresent  sense  of  the 
blessing,  which  can  be  but  fceljly  acted  by  the  rich,  into 
whose  minds  the  conception  of  wanting  a  dinner  could 
never,  but  by  some  extreme  theory,  have  entered.  The 
proper  end  of  food — the  animal  sustenance — is  barely 
contemplated  by  them.  The  poor  man's  bread  is  his 
daily  bread,  literally  his  bread  for  the  day.  Their  com-ses 
are  perennial. 

Again,  the  plainest  diet  seems  the  fittest  to  be  pre- 
ceded by  the  grace.  That  which  is  least  stimulative  to 
appetite,  leaves  the  mind  most  free  for  foreign  considera- 
tions. A  man  may  feel  tliankful,  heartily  thankful,  over 
a  dish  of  plain  mutton  with  turnips,  and  have  leisure  to 
reflect  upon  the  ordinance  and  institution  of  eating ;  when 
he  shall  confess  a  pertm-bation  of  mind,  inconsistent  Avith 
the  purposes  of  the  grace,  at  the  presence  of  venison  or 
turtle.  When  I  have  sate  (a  ranca  hospes)  at  rich  men's 
tables,  with  the  savoury  soup  and  messes  steaming  up  the 
nostrils,  and  moistening  the  lips  of  the  guests  with  desire 
and  a  distracted  choice,  I  have  felt  the  introduction  of 
that  ceremony  to  be  unseasonable.  With  the  ravenous 
orgasm  upon  you,  it  seems  impertinent  to  interpose  a  re- 
ligious sentiment.  It  is  a  confusion  of  purpose  to  mutter 
out  praises  from  a  mouth  that  waters.  The  heats  of  epi- 
ciu-ism  put  out  the  gentle  flame  of  devotion.  Tlie  in- 
cense which  rises  roimd  is  pagan,  and  the  belly-god  inter- 
♦cepts  it  for  its  ow^n.  The  very  excess  of  the  provision 
beyond  the  needs,  takes  away  all  sense  of  proportion 
between  the  end  and  means.  The  giver  is  veiled  by  his 
gifts.     You  are   startled   at  the  injustice    of  returning 


132  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

thanks — for  what  1 — for  having  too  much  while  so  many 
starve.     It  is  to  praise  the  Gods  amiss. 

I  have  observed  this  awkwardness  felt,  scarce  con- 
sciously perhaps,  by  the  good  man  who  says  the  grace. 
I  have  seen  it  in  clergymen  and  others — a  sort  of  shame 
— a  sense  of  the  co-presence  of  circumstances  which  un- 
hallow  the  blessing.  After  a  devotional  tone  put  on  foi- 
a  few  seconds,  how  rapidly  the  speaker  will  fall  into 
his  common  voice  !  helping  himself  or  his  neighbom-,  as  if 
to  get  rid  of  some  uneasy  sensation  of  hypocrisy.  Not 
that  the  good  man  was  a  hypocrite,  or  was  not  most  con- 
scientious in  the  discharge  of  the  duty  ;  but  he  felt  in  his 
inmost  mind  the  incompatibility  of  the  scene  and  the 
viands  before  him  with  the  exercise  of  a  calm  and  rational 
gratitude. 

I  hear  somebody  exclaim, — Would  you  have  Christians 
sit  down  at  table  like  hogs  to  their  troughs,  without 
remembering  the  Giver? — no— I  would  have  tlunn  sit 
down  as  Clu-istia,ns,  remembering  the  Giver,  and  less  like 
hogs.  Or,  if  their  appetites  must  run  riot,  and  they  must 
pamper  themselves  with  delicacies  for  which  east  and  west 
are  ransacked,  I  would  have  them  postjione  their  bene- 
diction to  a  fitter  season,  wdien  appetite  is  laid ;  when 
the  still  small  voice  can  be  heard,  and  the  reason  of  the 
grace  retimis — with  temperate  diet  and  restricted  dishes. 
Gluttony  and  surfeiting  are  no  proper  occasions  for  thanks- 
giving. When  Jeshurun  waxed  fat,  we  read  that  he 
kicked.  Virgil  knew  the  harpy-nature  better,  when  he 
p\it  into  the  mouth  of  Cela3no  anything  but  a  blessing. 
We  may  be  gratefully  sensible  of  the  deliciousness  of  some 
kinds  of  food  beyond  others,  though  that  is  a  meaner  and 
inferior  gratitude :  but  the  proper  object  of  the  grace  is 
sustenance,  not  relishes ;  daily  bread,  not  delicacies ;  the 
means  of  life,  and  not  the  means  of  pampering  the  carcass. 
With  what  frame  or  composure,  I  wonder,  can  a  city 
chaplain  pronounce  his  benediction  at  some  great  Hall- 
feast,  when  he'  knows  that  his  last  concluding  pious 
word — and  that  in  all  probability,  tlie  sacred  name  wliich 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  133 

he  preai'lu's — is  but  the  signal  for  so  many  imi)atieiit 
hai'ines  to  commence  their  foul  orgies,  with  as  little 
sense  of  true  thankfulness  (which  is  temperance)  as  those 
Virgilian  fowl !  It  is  well  if  the  good  man  himself  does 
not  feel  his  devotions  a  little  cloiided,  those  foggy  sensu- 
ous steams  mingling  with  and  polluting  the  pure  altar 
sacrifice. 

The  severest  satire  upon  full  tables  and  surfeits  is 
the  banrpiet  which  Satan,  in  the  "Paradise  Regained," 
provides  for  a  temptation  in  the  wilderness : 

A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  mode 
With  dishes  piled,  and  meats  of  noblest  sort 
And  savour  ;  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game, 
In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  sjiit,  or  boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed  ;  all  fish  from  sea  or  shore, 
Freshet  or  purling  brook,  for  which  was  drained 
Poutus,  and  Lucrine  bay,  and  Afric  coast. 

The  Tcmi)ter,  I  warrant  you,  thought  these  cates 
woidd  go  down  without  the  recommendatory  i)reface  of  a 
benediction.  They  are  like  to  be  short  graces  where  the 
devil  plays  the  host.  I  am  afraid  the  poet  wants  his 
usual  deci  )rum  in  this  place.  Was  he  thinking  of  the  old 
Roman  luxury,  or  of  a  gaudy  day  at  Cambridge  1  This 
was  a  temptation  fitter  for  a  Heliogabalus.  The  whole 
banquet  is  too  civic  and  cidinary,  and  the  accompani- 
ments altogether  a  profonation  of  that  deep,  abstracted, 
holy  scene.  The  mighty  artillery  of  sauces,  which  the 
cook-fiend  conjures  up,  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  simple 
wants  and  plain  hunger  of  the  guest.  He  that  disturbed 
him  in  his  dreams,  from  his  dreams  might  have  been 
taught  better.  To  the  temperate  fantasies  of  the  tamished 
Son  of  God,  what  sort  of  feasts  presented  themselves  1  — 
He  dreamed  indeed, 

As  appetite  is  wont  to  dream, 

Of  meats  and  drinks,  nature's  refreshment  sweet. 

But  what  meats  *? — 

Him  thought  he  by  the  brook  of  Cheritli  stood, 
And  saw  the  ravens  with  their  horny  beaks 


134  THE  ESSAYS  OK  ELIA. 

Food  to  Elijah  Ijriiigiiig  even  ainl  morn  ; 

Tbougli  ravenous,  taught  to  abstain  from  what  they  brought. 

He  saw  the  proi)het  also  how  lie  fled 

Into  the  desert,  and  how  there  he  slept 

Under  a  juniper  ;  then  how  awaked 

He  found  his  supper  on  the  coals  prepared. 

And  by  the  angel  was  bid  rise  and  eat. 

And  ate  the  .second  time  after  repose, 

The  strength  wdiereof  sufficed  him  forty  days  : 

Sometimes,  that  with  Elijah  he  partook, 

Or  as  a  giiest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 

Nothing  in  Milton  is  finelier  fancied  than  these  temperate 
dreams  of  the  divine  Himgerer.  To  which  of  these  two 
visionary  banquets,  think  you,  would  the  introduction  of 
what  is  called  the  grace  have  been  the  most  fitting  and 
pertinent  ? 

Theoretically  I  am  no  enemy  to  graces  ;  but  practically 
I  own  that  (liefore  meat  especially)  they  seem  to  involve 
something  awkward  and  unseasonable.  Our  appetites,  of 
one  or  another  kind,  are  excellent  spm's  to  our  reason, 
which  might  otherwise  but  feebly  set  about  the  great  ends 
of  preserving  and  continuing  the  species.  They  are  fit 
blessings  to  be  contemplated  at  a  distance  witli  a  becom- 
ing gratittule  ;  but  the  moment  of  appetite  (the  judicious 
reader  Avill  apprehend  me)  is,  perhaps,  the  least  fit  season 
for  that  exercise.  The  Quakers,  who  go  about  their  busi- 
ness of  eveiy  description  with  more  calmness  than  we,  have 
more  title  to  the  use  of  these  benedictory  prefaces.  I  have 
always  admired  their  silent  grace,  and  the  more  because 
I  liave  ol^served  their  ai)plications  to  the  meat  and  drink 
folk) wing  to  be  less  passionate  and  sensual  than  ours. 
They  arc  neither  gluttons  nor  wiue-bil)l)ers  as  a  })eople. 
They  eat,  as  a  horse  bolts  his  chopped  hay,  with  indiUcr- 
ence,  calmness,  and  cleanly  circumstances.  They  iicitlicr 
grease  nor  sh)p  tliemselves.  When  I  see  a  citizen  in  his 
bib  and  tucker,  I  cannot  imagine  it  a  siu'plice. 

I  am  no  Qtiaker  at  my  food.  I  confess  I  am  not  in- 
different to  the  kinds  of  it.  Those  unctuous  morsels  of 
deer's  flesh  were  not  made  to  be  received  with  dispassion- 
ate services.     I  liate  a  man  who  swallows  it,  affecting  not 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  135 

to  know  wliat  he  is  eating.  I  suspect  his  taste  in  higher 
matters.  I  shrink  instinctively  from  one  who  professes 
to  like  minced  veal.     There  is  a  physiognomical  character 

in  the  tastes  for  food.     C holds  that  a  man  cannot 

have  a  pure  mind  who  refuses  apple-dumplings.  I  am  not 
certain  but  he  is  right.  •  With  the  decay  of  my  fii-st 
innocence,  I  confess  a  less  and  less  relish  daily  for  those 
innocuous  cates.  The  whole  vegetable  tribe  have  lost 
their  gitst  with  me.  Only  I  stick  to  asparagus,  which 
still  seems  to  inspire  gentle  thoughts.  I  am  impatient 
and  quendous  under  cidinaiy  disappointments,  as  to  come 
home  at  the  dinner  horn-,  for  instance,  expecting  some 
savomy  mess,  and  to  find  one  quite  tasteless  and  sapitUess. 
Butter  ill  melted — that  commonest  of  kitchen  failiu'es — 
puts  me  beside  my  tenor. — Tlie  author  of  the  Rambler 
used  to  make  inarticulate  animal  noises  over  a  favoiu-ite 
food.  Was  this  the  music  ciiute  proper  to  be  preceded 
by  the  grace  1  or  would  the  pioas  man  have  done  better 
to  postpone  his  devotions  to  a  season  when  the  blessing 
might  be  contemplated  with  less  pertiu'bation  1  I  quarrel 
with  no  man's  tastes,  nor  would  set  my  thin  face  against 
those  excellent  things,  in  their  way,  jollity  and  feasting. 
But  as  these  exercises,  however  laudable,  have  little  in 
them  of  grace  or  gracefidness,  a  man  shoidd  be  sure,  be- 
fore he  ventiu-es  so  to  grace  them,  that  while  he  is  pre- 
tending his  devotions  othei-where,  he  is  not  secretly  kissing 
his  hand  to  some  great  fish — his  Dagon — with  a  special 
ccmsecration  of  no  art  but  the  fat  tm-ecn  before  him. 
Graces  are  the  sweet  preluding  strains  to  the  banquets  of 
angels  and  children  ;  to  the  roots  and  severer  repasts  of 
the  ChartreiLse  ;  to  the  slender,  but  not  slenderly  acknow- 
ledged, refection  of  the  poor  and  humble  man  :  but  at  the 
heaped-up  boards  of  the  pampered  and  the  luximoas  they 
become  of  dissonant  mood,  kss  timed  and  timed  to  the 
occasion,  methinks,  than  the  noise  of  tliose  better  befit- 
ting organs  woidd  be  which  children  hear  tales  of,  at 
Hog's  Xorton.  We  sit  too  long  at  our  meals,  or  are  too 
curious  in  the  study  of  them,  or  too  disordered  in  our 


136  THE  ESSAYS  OF  KLIA. 

application  to  them,  or  engross  too  great  a  ]iortion 
of  those  good  tilings  (which  should  be  common)  to  our 
share,  to  be  able  with  any  "grace  to  say  grace.  To  be 
tliankfid  for  what  we  grasp  exceeding  our  proportion,  is 
to  add  hypocrisy  to  injustice.  A  lurking  sense  of  this 
truth  is  what  makes  the  performance  of  this  duty  so  cold 
and  spiritless  a  service  at  most  tables.  In  houses  where 
the  grace  is  as  indispensable  as  the  naplcin,  who  has  not 
seen  that  never-settled  question  arise,  as  to  who  shall  say 
it  2  wliile  the  good  man  of  the  house  and  the  visitor 
clergyman,  or  some  other  guest  belike  of  next  authority, 
from  years  or  gravity,  shall  be  bandying  about  the  office 
between  tlicm  as  a  matter  of  compliment,  each  of  them 
not  unwilling  to  shift  the  awkward  burthen  of  an  equivo- 
cal duty  from  his  own  shoidders  % 

I  once  drank  tea  in  company  with  two  Methodist 
divines  of  different  persuasions,  whom  it  was  my  fortune 
to  introduce  to  each  other  for  the  fii'st  time  that  evening. 
Before  the  first  cup  was  handed  roimd,  one  of  these 
reverend  gentlemen  put  it  to  the  other,  with  all  due 
solemnity,  whether  he  chose  to  say  anything.  It  seems 
it  is  the  custom  with  some  sectaries  to  put  up  a  sliort 
prayer  before  this  meal  also.  His  reverend  brother  did 
not  at  first  cpiite  apprehend  him,  but  upon  an  ex})hination, 
with  little  less  importance  he  made  answer  that  it  was 
not  a  custom  known  in  his  chiu'ch  :  in  which  courteous 
evasion  the  other  acquiescing  for  good  maimers'  sake,  or 
in  compliance  with  a  weak  lirother,  the  supplementary  or 
tea  grace  was  waived  altogether.  With  what  spirit 
might  not  Lucian  have  painted  two  priests,  of  his  re- 
ligion, playing  into  each  other's  hands  the  coiiipliment 
of  performing  or  omitting  a  sacrifice, — the  hungry  God 
meantime,  doubtful  of  his  incense,  with  expectant  nostrils 
hovering  over  the  two  flamens,  and  (as  between  two  stools) 
gt)ing  away  in  the  end  without  his  supper. 

A  short  form  upon  these  occasions  is  felt  to  want  re- 
verence ;  a  long  one,  I  am  afraid,  cannot  escape  tlie 
charge  of  impertinence.     I  do  not  quite  approve  of  the 


DREAM  CHILDREN  ;   A  REVERIE.  137 

epigramuKitic  conciseness  with  which  that  equivocal  wag 
(l;)ut  my  pleasant  school-fellow)  C.  V.  L.,  when  inipor- 
tunetl  for  a  grace,  used  to  inquire,  first  slyly  leering 
down  the  table,  "Is  there  no  clergyman  here?"- — sig- 
nificantly adding,  "  Thank  G — ."  Nor  do  I  think  our 
old  form  at  school  quite  pertinent,  where  we  were  used 
to  preface  our  bald  bread-and-cheese-suppers  with  a  pre- 
amble, connecting  with  that  humble  blessing  a  recognition 
of  benefits  the  most  awfid  and  overwhelming  to  the 
imagination  which  religion  has  to  oft'er.  Non  tunc  illis 
erat  locus.  I  remember  we  were  put  to  it  to  reconcile 
the  phrase  "good  creatures,"  upon  which  the  blessing 
rested,  with  the  fiire  set  before  us,  wilfully  understanding 
that  expression  in  a  low  and  animal  sense, — till  some  one 
recalled  a  legend,  which  told  how,  in  the  golden  days  of 
Christ's,  the  young  Hospitallers  were  wont  to  have  smok- 
ing joints  of  roast  meat  upon  their  nightly  boards,  till 
some  pious  benefactor,  commiserating  the  decencies, 
rather  than  the  palates,  of  the  children,  commuted  our 
flesh  for  ganneuts,  and  gave  us — horresco  rvjerais — 
trousers  instead  of  mutton. 


DREAM  CHILDREN;  A  REVERIE. 

Children  love  to  listen  to  stories  about  their  elders, 
when  they  were  children ;  to  stretch  their  imagination  to 
the  conception  of  a  traditionary  great-uncle,  or  grandame, 
whom  they  never  saw.  It  was  in  this  spirit  that  my 
little  ones  crept  about  me  the  other  evening  to  hear 
about  their  great-grandmother  Field,  who  lived  in  a  great 
house  in  Norfolk  (a  hundred  times  bigger  than  that  in 
which  they  and  papa  lived)  which  had  been  the  scene — 
so  at  least  it  was  generally  believed  in  that  part  of  the 
coimtry — of  the  tragic  incidents  which  they  had  lately 
become  femiliar  \n\X\  from  the  ballad  of  the  Children  in 
the  Wood.     Certain  it  is  that  the  whole  stoiy  of  the 


138  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

children  uiid  their  cruel  uncle  was  to  be  seen  fairly 
carved  out  in  wood  upon  the  chimney-piece  of  the  great 
hall,  the  whole  story  down  to  the  Robin  Redbreasts ;  till 
a  foolish  rich  person  pulled  it  down  to  set  up  a  marble 
one  of  modern  invention  in  its  stead,  with  no  story  upon 
it.  Here  Alice  put  out  one  of  her  dear  mother's  looks, 
too  tender  to  be  called  upbraiding.  Then  I  went  on  to 
say,  how  religious  and  how  good  their  great-grandmother 
Field  was,  how  beloved  and  respected  by  everybody, 
though  she  was  not  indeed  the  mistress  of  this  great 
house,  but  had  only  the  charge  of  it  (and  yet  in  some 
respects  she  might  be  said  to  be  the  mistress  of  it  too) 
committed  to  her  by  the  owner,  who  preferred  living  in  a 
newer  and  more  fixshionable  mansion  which  he  had  pur- 
chased somewhere  in  the  adjoining  county ;  but  still  she 
lived  in  it  in  a  manner  as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and 
kept  up  the  dignity  of  the  great  house  in  a  sort  while  she 
lived,  which  afterwards  came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly 
pulled  down,  and  all  its  old  ornaments  stripped  and  carried 
away  to  the  owner's  other  house,  where  they  were  set  up, 
and  looked  as  awkward  as  if  some  one  were  to  carry 
away  the  old  tombs  they  had  seen  lat(4y  at  the  Al)bey, 
and  stick  them  up  in  Lady  C.'s  tawdry  gilt  drawing-room. 
Here  John  smiled,  as  nuich  as  to  say,  "  that  woidd  be 
foolish  indeed."  And  then  I  told  how,  when  she  came 
to  die,  her  funeral  was  attended  by  a  concourse  of  all  the 
poor,  and  some  of  the  gentry  too,  of  the  neighbourhood 
for  many  miles  round,  to  show  their  respect  for  her 
memory,  because  she  had  been  such  a  good  and  religious 
woman ;  so  good  indeed  that  she  knew  all  the  Psaltery 
by  heart,  ay,  and  a  great  part  of  the  Testament  besides. 
Here  little  Alice  spread  her  hands.  Then  I  told  what  a 
tall,  upright,  graceful  person  their  great  -  grandmother 
Field  once  was  ;  and  how  in  her  youth  she  was  esteemed 
the  best  dancer — here  Alice's  little  right  foot  played  an 
involuntary  movement,  till,  upon  my  looking  grave,  it 
desisted — the  best  dancer,  I  was  saying,  in  the  county, 
till  a  cniel  disease,  called  a  cancer,  came,  and  bowed  her 


DREAM  CHILDREN  ;    A  REVERIE.  139 

down  witli  i)aiii  ;  Imt  it  could  never  liend  her  good 
spirits,  or  make  them  stoop,  but  they  were  still  upriglit, 
bec'ause  she  was  so  good  and  religious.  Then  I  told  how 
she  was  used  to  sleep  by  herself  in  a  lone  chamber  of  the 
great  lone  house;  and  how  she  believed  that  an  apparition 
of  two  infimts  was  to  be  seen  at  midnight  gliding  up  and 
down  the  great  staircase  near  where  she  slept,  but  she 
said  "  those  innocents  would  do  her  no  harm ; "  and 
how  frightened  I  used  to  be,  though  in  those  days  I  had 
my  maid  to  sleep  with  me,  because  I  was  never  half  so 
good  or  religious  as  she — and  yet  I  never  saw  the  infants. 
Here  John  expanded  all  his  eyebrows  and  tried  to  look 
coimxgeous.  Then  I  told  how  good  she  was  to  all  her 
grandchildren,  having  us  to  the  great  house  in  the  holy- 
days,  where  I  in  particidar  used  to  spend  many  hoiu's  by 
myself,  in  gazing  upon  the  old  busts  of  the  twelve 
Ca?sars,  that  had  been  Emperors  of  Rome,  till  the  old 
niarl)le  heads  woidd  seem  to  live  again,  or  I  to  be  turned 
into  marble  with  them ;  how  I  never  could  be  tired  with 
roaming  about  that  huge  mansion,  with  its  vast  empty 
rooms,  with  their  worn-out  hangings,  fluttering  tajjestry, 
and  carved  oaken  panels,  with  the  gilding  almost  rubbed 
out — sometimes  in  the  spacious  old-fashioned  gardens, 
wliich  I  had  almost  to  myself,  unless  when  now  and  then 
a  solitary  gardening  man  woidd  cross  me — and  how  the 
nectarines  and  peaches  hung  upon  the  walls,  without  my 
ever  ottering  to  pluck  them,  because  they  were  forliiddcn 
fruit,  unless  now  and  then,- — and  because  I  had  more 
pleasm"e  in  strolling  about  among  the  old  melancholy- 
looking  yew-trees,  or  the  fii'S,  and  picking  up  the  red 
berries,  and  the  fir-apples,  which  were  good  for  nothing 
but  to  look  at — or  in  lying  about  upon  the  fresh  grass  with 
all  the  fine  garden  smells  around  me — or  basking  in  the 
orangery,  till  I  could  almost  fimcy  myself  ripening  too 
along  with  the  oranges  and  the  limes  in  that  gratefid 
warmth — or  in  watching  the  dace  that  darted  to  and  fro 
in  the  fish-pond,  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  with  here 
and  there  a  great  sulky  pike  hanging  midway  down  the 


140  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

wjiter  ill  silent  state,  as  if  it  mocked  at  their  impertinent 
friskings,  —  I  had  more  pleasure  in  these  busy -idle 
diversions  than  in  all  the  sweet  flavours  of  peaches, 
nectarines,  oranges,  and  such -like  common  baits  of 
children.  Here  John  slyly  deposited  back  upon  the  plate 
a  bunch  of  grapes,  which,  not  unobserved  by  Alice,  he 
had  mcdit;ited  dividing  with  her,  and  both  seemed 
willing  to  relinquish  them  for  the  present  as  irrelevant. 
Then,  in  somewhat  a  more  heightened  tone,  I  told  how, 
though  their  great-grandmother  Field  loved  all  her  grand- 
children, yet  in  an  especial  manner  she  might  be  said  to 
love  their  uncle,  John  L ,  because  he  was  so  hand- 
some and  spirited  a  youth,  and  a  king  to  the  rest  of  us ; 
and,  instead  of  moping  about  in  solitaiy  corners,  like 
some  of  us,  he  would  mount  the  most  mettlesome  horse 
he  could  get,  when  but  an  imp  no  bigger  than  themselves, 
and  make  it  carry  him  half  over  the  county  in  a  morning, 
and  join  the  hunters  when  there  were  any  out — and  yet 
he  loved  the  old  great  house  and  gardens  too,  l)ut  had 
too  much  spirit  to  be  always  pent  up  Avithin  their 
boundaries  —  and  how  their  uncle  grew  up  to  man's 
estate  as  brave  as  he  was  handsome,  to  the  admiration  of 
everybody,  but  of  their  great-grandmother  Field  most 
especially ;  and  how  he  used  to  cany  me  upon  his  back 
when  I  was  a  lame-footed  boy — for  he  was  a  good  bit 
older  than  me — many  a  mile  when  I  could  not  walk  for 
pain ; — -and  how  in  after  life  he  became  lame-footed  too, 
and  I  did  not  always  (I  fear)  make  allowances  enough  for 
him  when  he  was  impatient  and  in  pain,  nor  remember 
sufficiently  how  considerate  he  had  been  to  me  when  I 
was  lame-footed  ;  and  how  when  he  died,  though  he  had 
not  been  dead  an  hour,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a 
great  while  ago,  such  a  distance  tliere  is  betwixt  life  and 
death ;  and  how  I  bore  his  death  as  I  thought  pretty 
well  at  first,  but  afterwards  it  haunted  and  haunted  me ; 
and  though  I  did  not  cry  or  take  it  to  lieart  as  some  do, 
and  as  I  think  he  would  have  done  if  I  had  died,  yet  I 
missed  him  all  day  long,  and   knew  not  till  then  how 


DREAM  CHILDREN  ;    A  REVERIE.  141 

much  I  had  loved  him.  I  missed  his  kindness,  and 
I  missed  his  crossness,  and  wished  him  to  he  alive 
again,  to  be  quarrelling  with  him  (for  we  quarrelled  some- 
times), rather  thau  not  have  him  again,  and  was  as  uneasy 
without  him,  as  he,  their  poor  uncle,  must  have  been 
when  the  doctor  took  off  his  limb. — Here  the  children 
fell  a-crying,  and  asked  if  their  little  mourning  whicli 
they  had  on  was  not  for  uncle  John,  and  they  looked  uj), 
and  prayed  me  not  to  go  on  about  their  uncle,  but  to  tell 
them  some  stories  about  their  pretty  dead  mother. 
Then  I  told  how  for  seven  long  years,  in  hope  sometimes, 
sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting  ever,  I  courted  the 
flair  Alice  W — n  ;  and  as  much  as  children  covdd  tnider- 
stand,  I  explained  to  them  what  coyness,  and  difhculty, 
and  denial,  meant  in  maidens — when  suddenly  turning  to 
Alice,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes 
with  such  a  reality  of  re-presentment,  that  I  became  in 
doidjt  which  of  them  stood  there  before  me,  or  Avhose 
that  bright  hair  was ;  and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the 
children  gradually  gi'ew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding, 
and  still  receding,  till  nothing  at  last  but  two  mom-nful 
foatm-es  were  seen  in  the  uttermost  distance,  which,  with- 
out speech,  strangely  impressed  upon  me  the  effects  of 
speech  :  "  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee,  nor  are  we 
cliildren  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call  Bartrum 
father.  We  are  nothing;  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams. 
We  are  only  what  might'  have  been,  and  must  wait  upon 
the  tedious  shores  of  Lethe  millions  of  ages  Ijcfore  we 
have  existence,  and  a  name  " and  immediately  awak- 
ing, I  found  myself  (piietly  seated  in  my  bachelor  arm- 
chair, Avherc  I  had  fallen  asleep,  with  the  faithful 
Bridget  unclianged  by  my  side — but  John  L.  (or  James 
Eli  a)  was  gone  for  ever. 


142  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS. 

IN  A  LETTER  TO  B.  F.   ESQ.,   AT  SYDNEY,   NEW  SOUTH  WALES. 

My  dear  F. — When  I  think  how  welcome  the  sight  of  a 
letter  from  the  world  where  you  were  born  must  be  to  you 
in  that  strange  one  to  which  you  have  been  transplanted, 
I  feel  some  compunctious  visitings  at  my  long  silence. 
But,  indeed,  it  is  no  easy  effort  to  set  about  a  correspond- 
ence at  our  distance.  The  weary  world  of  waters 
between  us  oppresses  the  imagination.  It  is  difficidt  to 
conceive  how  a  scrawl  of  mine  should  ever  stretch  across 
it.  It  is  a  sort  of  presumption  to  expect  that  one's 
thoughts  should  live  so  far.  It  is  like  writing  for  pos- 
terity; and  reminds  me  of  one  of  Mrs.  Rowe's  super- 
scriptions, "Alcander  to  Strephon  in  the  shades." 
Cowley's  Post-Angel  is  no  more  than  would  be  ex- 
pedient in  such'  an  intercourse.  One  drops  a  packet  at 
Lombard  -  street,  and  in  twenty-four  hom-s  a  friend  in 
Cumberland  gets  it  as  fresh  as  if  it  came  in  ice.  It 
is  only  like  whispering  through  a  long  trumpet.  But 
suppose  a  tube  let  down  from  the  moon,  watli  yourself  at 
one  end  and  the  man  at  the  other ;  it  would  be  some 
balk  to  the  spirit  of  conversation,  if  you  kuew  that  the 
dialogue  exchanged  with  that  interesting  theosophist 
would  take  two  or  three  revolutions  of  a  higher  luminary  in 
its  passage.  Yet,  for  aught  I  know,  you  may  be  some 
parasangs  nigher  that  primitive  idea — Plato's  man — than 
we  in  England  here  have  the  honour  to  reckon  ourselves. 
Epistolary  matter  usually  compriseth  three  topics ; 
news,  sentiment,  and  pims.  In  the  latter,  I  include  all 
non-serious  subjects  ;  or  subjects  serioiLs  in  themselves, 
but  treated  after  my  foshion,  uon-seriously. — And  fii'st, 
for  news.  In  them  the  most  desiralile  circaunstance,  I 
su})])ose,  is  that  they  shall  be  true.  But  what  security 
can  I  have  that  what  I  now  send  you  for  truth  shall  not, 


DISTANT  COERESPONDENTS.  143 

before  you  get  it,  iinaccouutal^ly  tm-n  into  a  lie  ?  For 
iustauce,  oiir  mutiial  friend  P.  is  at  this  present  writing 
— my  Noto — in  good  health,  and  enjoys  a  fair  share  of 
worhlly  reputation.  You  are  glad  to  hear  it.  This  is 
natural  and  friendly.  But  at  this  present  reading — your 
Xoiv — he  may  possibly  be  in  the  Bench,  or  going  to  be 
hanged,  w]iich  in  reason  ought  to  abate  something  of  yom- 
transport  {i.e.,  at  hearing  he  was  weU,  etc.),  or  at  least 
considerably  to  modify  it.  I  am  going  to  the  play  this 
evening,  to  have  a  laugh  ^vith  Miuiden.     You  have  no 

theatre,  I  think  you  told  me,  in  your  land  of  d d 

realities.  You  naturally  lick  your  lips,  and  envy  me  my 
felicity.  Think  but  a  moment,  and  you  will  correct  the 
hatefid  emotion.  Why,  it  is  Smiday  morning  with  you, 
and  1823.  This  confusion  of  tenses,  this  grand  solecism 
of  two  presents,  is  in  a  degree  common  to  aU  postage. 
But  if  I  sent  you  word  to  Bath  or  Devizes,  that  I  was 
expecting  the  aforesaid  treat  this  evening,  though  at  the 
moment  you  received  the  intelligence  my  fidl  feast  of  fun 
woidd  be  over,  yet  there  woidd  be  for  a  day  of  two  after, 
as  you  woidd  well  know,  a  smack,  a  relish  left  upon  my 
mental  palate,  which  Avould  give  rational  encoiu'agement 
for  you  to  foster  a  portion,  at  least,  of  the  tlisagreeable 
])assion,  which  it  was  in  part  my  intention  to  produce. 
But  ten  months  hence,  yom-  envy  or  yom-  sympathy  would 
be  as  useless  as  a  passion  spent  upon  the  dead.  Not 
only  does  truth,  in  these  long  intei-vals,  imessence  herself, 
but  (w'hat  is  harder)  one  cannot  ventm-e  a  crude  fiction, 
for  the  fear  that  it  may  ripen  into  a  tmth  upon  the 
voyage.     What  a  wild  improbable  banter  I  put  upon  you, 

some  three  years  since, of  Will  Weatherall  having 

married  a  servant-maid  !  I  remember  gravely  considting 
j^ou  how  we  were  to  receive  her — for  Will's  wife  was  in 
no  case  to  be  rejected ;  and  yom-  no  less  serious  replica- 
tion in  the  matter ;  how  tenderly  you  ad^^sed  an  ab- 
stemious introduction  of  literary  topics  before  the  lacty, 
with  a  caution  not  to  lie  too  forward  in  bringing  on  the 
carpet  matters  more  within  the  sphere  of  her  intelligence  ; 


144  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

your  deliberate  judgment,  or  rather  wise  suspension  of 
sentence,  how  far  jacks,  and  spits,  and  mops,  could,  with 
propriety,  be  introduced  as  subjects ;  whether  the  con- 
scious avoiding  of  all  such  matters  in  discoiu'se  would  not 
have  a  worse  look  than  the  taking  of  them  casually  in  our 
way ;  in  what  manner  we  should  carry  ourselves  to  our 
maid  Becky,  Mrs.  William  Weatherall  being  by ;  whether 
we  should  show  more  delicacy,  and  a  truer  sense  of  rcsiiect 
for  Will's  wife,  by  treating  Becky  with  our  customary 
chiding  before  her,  or  by  an  unusual  deferential  civility 
paid  to  Becky,  as  to  a  person  of  great  worth,  but  thrown 
l;)y  the  caprice  of  fate  into  a  humljle  station.  There  were 
difficidties,  I  remember,  on  both  sides,  which  you  did  me 
the  favour  to  state  with  the  precision  of  a  lawyer,  united 
to  the  tenderness  of  a  friend.  I  laughed  in  my  sleeve  at 
your  solemn  pleadings,  when  lo  !  while  I  was  valuing  my- 
self upon  this  flam  put  upon  you  in  New  South  Wales, 
the  devil  in  England,  jealons  possibly  of  any  lie-children 
not  his  own,  or  working  after  my  copy,  has  actually  in- 
stigated our  friend  (not  three  days  since)  to  the  commission 
of  a  matrimony,  which  I  had  oidy  conjured  up  for  your 
diversion.  William  Weatherall  has  married  Mrs.  Cotterel's 
maid.  But  to  take  it  in  its  truest  sense,  you  will  see,  my 
dear  F.,  that  news  from  me  must  become  history  to  you  ; 
which  I  neither  profess  to  write,  nor  indeed  care  much  for 
reading.  No  person,  under  a  diviner,  can,  with  any 
prospect  of  veracity,  conduct  a  correspondence  at  such  an 
arm's  length.  Two  prophets,  indeed,  might  thus  inter- 
change intelligence  with  eff'eot ;  the  epoch  of  the  writer 
(Habakkuk)  falling  in  with  the  true  present  time  of  the 
receiver  (Daniel) ;  but  then  we  are  no  prophets. 

Then  as  to  sentiment.  It  fares  little  better  with  that. 
This  kind  of  dish,  altove  all,  requires  to  lie  served  up  hot, 
or  sent  oft*  in  water-i)lates,  that  your  fi'iend  may  have  it 
almost  as  warm  as  yourself.  If  it  have  time  to  cool,  it  is 
the  most  tasteless  of  all  cold  meats.  I  have  often  smiled 
at  a  conceit  of  the  late  Lord  C.  It  seems  that  travelling 
somewhere  about  Geneva,  he  came  to  some  pretty  green 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  145 

spot,  or  nook,  where  a  willow,  or  sometliiiiij,',  huiiy  so 
fautastically  and  invitingly  over  a  stream — was  it  1 — or  a 
rock  ? — no  matter — but  the  stillness  and  the  repose,  after 
a  weary  journey,  'tis  likely,  in  a  languid  moment  of  his 
Lordship's  hot,  restless  life,  so  took  his  fancy  that  he 
could  imagine  no  place  so  proper,  in  the  event  of  his 
death,  to  lay  his  bones  in.  This  was  all  very  natui'al  and 
excusable  as  a  sentiment,  and  shows  his  character  in  a 
very  pleasing  light.  But  when  from  a  passing  sentiment 
it  came  to  be  an  act ;  and  when,  by  a  positive  testa- 
mentary disposal,  his  remains  were  actually  carried  all 
that  way  from  England  ;  who  was  there,  some  desperate 
sentimentalists  excepted,  that  did  not  ask  the  question, 
Why  could  not  his  Lordship  have  found  a  si)ot  as  solitary, 
a  nook  as  romantic,  a  tree  as  green  and  pendent,  with  a 
stream  as  emlilematic  to  his  purpose,  in  Sm-rey,  in  Dorset, 
or  in  Devon?  Conceive  the  sentiment  boarded  up, 
freighted,  entered  at  the  Custom  House  (startling  the 
tide-waiters  with  the  novelty),  hoisted  into  a  ship.  Con- 
ceive it  pawed  about  and  handled  between  the  rude  jests 
of  tarpaulin  ruffians — a  thing  of  its  delicate  texture — the 
salt  bilge  wetting  it  till  it  liecame  as  vapid  as  a  damaged 
lustring.  Suppose  it  in  material  danger  (mariners  have 
some  superstition  about  sentiments)  of  being  tossed  over 
in  a  fresh  gale  to  some  propitiatory  shark  (spirit  of  Saint 
Gothard,  save  us  from  a  quietus  so  foreign  to  the  deviser's 
purpose  !)  but  it  has  happily  evaded  a  fishy  consummation. 
Trace  it  then  to  its  lucky  landing — at  Lyons  shall  we  say  1 
— I  have  not  the  map  before  me — jostled  upon  four  men's 
shoulders — baiting  at  this  town — stopping  to  refresh  at 
t'other  village — waiting  a  passport  here,  a  license  there  ; 
the  sanction  of  the  magistracy  in  this  district,  the  con- 
currence of  the  ecclesiastics  in  that  canton  ;  till  at  length 
it  arrives  at  its  destination,  tired  out  and  jaded,  from  a 
brisk  sentiment  into  a  feature  of  silly  pride  or  tawdry 
senseless  afffectation.  How  few  sentiments,  my  dear  F., 
I  am. afraid  we  can  set  down,  in  the  sailor's  phrase,  as 
quite  seaworthy. 

L 


14G  THE  ESSAYS  OE  ELIA. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  agroeal)lc  levities,  wiiicli  tiidugii  eoii- 
temptible  in  bulk,  arc  the  twiukliu^ij  corpiiseula  which 
should  irradiate  a  right  friendly  ci)istle — your  puns  and 
small  jests  are,  I  api^rehend,  extremely  circumscribed  in 
tluur  sphere  of  action.  They  arc  so  far  from  a  capacity  of 
being  packed  up  and  sent  beyond  sea,  they  will  scarce 
endure  to  be  traiis]>ortcd  by  hand  from  this  room  to  the 
next.  Their  vigour  is  as  the  instant  of  their  birth.  Their 
mitriment  for  their  lirief  existence  is  the  intellectual  atmo- 
sphere of  the  bystanders  :  or  this  last  is  the  fine  slime  of 
Nilus — the  vielior  hitns — whose  maternal  recipiency  is  as 
necessary  as  the  sol  pater  to  their  equivocal  generation. 
A  jiun  hath  a  hearty  kind  of  present  ear-kissing  smai'k 
with  it ;  you  can  no  more  transmit  it  in  its  pristine  flavour 
than  you  can  send  a  kiss.-^Have  you  not  tried  in  some 
instances  to  palm  off"  a  yesterday's  pun  upon  a  gentleman, 
and  has  it  answered  1  Not  but  it  was  new  to  his  hearing, 
but  it  did  not  seem  to  come  new  from  you.  It  did  not 
hitch  in.  It  was  like  jiicking  up  at  a  village  ale-house  a 
two  days'-old  newspaper.  You  have  not  seen  it  before, 
but  you  resent  the  stale  thing  as  an  affi'ont.  This  sort 
of  merchandize  above  all  reqiures  a  quick  return.  A 
pun,  and  its  recognitory  laugh,  must  l)e  co-instantaneous. 
The  one  is  the  brisk  lightning,  the  other  the  fierce 
thunder.  A  moment's  interval,  and  the  link  is  snapped. 
A  pun  is  reflected  from  a  friend's  face  as  from  a 
mirror.  Who  woifld  consult  his  sweet  visnomy,  if 
the  polished  sm-feice  were  two  or  three  minutes  (not  to 
speak  of  twelve  months,  my  dear  F.)  in  giving  back 
its  copy  1 

I  cannot  image  to  myself  whereabout  you  are.  When 
I  try  to  fix  it,  Peter  Wilkins's  island  comes  across  me. 
Sometimes  you  seem  to  be  in  the  Hades  of  Thieves.  I 
see  Diogenes  piying  among  you  with  his  perpetual  fniit- 
less  lantern.  What  must  you  be  willing  by  this  time  to 
give  for  the  sight  of  an  honest  man  !  You  must  almost 
have  forgotten  how  n'e  look.  And  tell  me  what  your 
Sydney! tes  do?  are  they  th**v*ng  all  day  long?     Merci- 


DISTANT  CORKESPONDENTS.  l-i7 

fill  Heaven  !  what  ijri)])erty  can  stand  ai,fainst  such  a  de- 
predatiou  !  The  kangaroos — yoiu-  Aborigines — do  they 
keep  their  primitive  simplicity  im- Europe -tainted,  with 
those  little  short  fore  puds,  looking  like  a  lesson  framed 
by  natm-e  to  the  pick-pocket !  Marry,  for  diving  into 
fobs  they  are  rather  lamely  provided  a  priori ;  but  if  the 
hue  and  cry  were  once  up,  they  woidd  show  as  fair  a  pair 
of  hind-shifters  lus  the  expertest  loco-motor  in  the  colony. 
We  hear  the  most  improbal;)le  tales  at  this  distance.  Pray 
is  it  true  that  the  young  Spartans  among  you  arc  born 
with  six  fingers,  which  spoils  their  scanning  1 — It  must 
look  very  odd  ;  but  use  reconciles.  For  their  scansion,  it 
is  less  to  be  regretted  ;  for  if  they  take  it  into  their  heads 
to  l)e  poets,  it  is  odds  Ijut  they  tm'u  out,  the  greater  part 
of  them,  vile  plagiarists.  Is  there  much  diilcrence  to  see, 
too,  between  the  son  of  a  th**f  and  the  grandson?  or 
where  does  the  taint  stop  ?  Do  you  bleach  in  three  or  in 
four  generations  1  I  have  many  questions  to  put,  but  ten 
Delphic  voyages  can  be  made  in  a  shorter  time  than  it 
^^^ll  take  to  satisfy  my  scraples.  Do  you  grow  your  own 
liemp? — What  is  your  staple  trade, — exclusive  of  the 
national  profession,  I  mean  1  Yom-  locksmiths,  I  take  it, 
are  some  of  yom*  great  capitalists. 

I  am  insensibly  chatting  to  you  as  fjimiliarly  as  when 
we  used  to  exchange  good-morrows  oiit  of  our  old  con- 
tiguous windows,  in  pump- famed  Hare  Court  in  the 
Temple.  Why  did  you  ever  leave  that  cpiiet  corner  1 — 
Why  did  1 1 — -with  its  complement  of  four  poor  elms,  from 
whose  smoke-dyed  barks,  the  theme  of  jesting  nu"alists,  I 
]ncked  my  first  ladybirds  !  My  heart  is  as  diy  as  that 
spring  sometimes  proves  in  a  thii'sty  August,  wdien  I  revert 
to  the  space  that  is  between  us ;  a  length  of  passage 
enough  to  render  obsolete  the  phrases  of  om-  English 
letters  before  they  can  reach  you.  But  while  I  talk  I 
think  you  hear  me, — thoughts  dallying  with  vain  siu'- 
mise — 

Aye  me  !  while  thee  the  seas  and  soundiug  shores 

Hold  far  away. 


148  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Come  back,  bctnrc  I  am  grown  into  a  very  old  man,  so 
as  you  shall  hardly  know  me.  Come,  before  Bridget 
walks  on  crutches.  Girls  whom  you  left  children  have 
become  sage  matrons  while  you  are  tarrying  there.  The 
blooming  Miss  W — r  (you  remember  Sally  W — r)  called 
u])on  us  yesterday,  an  aged  crone.  Folks  whom  you 
knew  d\o  off  every  year.  Formerly,  I  thought  that  death 
was  wearing  out, — I  stood  ramparted  about  with  so  many 
healthy  friends.  The  departure  of  J.  W.,  two  springs 
back,  corrected  my  delusion.  Since  then  the  old  divorcer 
has  been  busy.  If  you  do  not  make  haste  to  return, 
there  will  be  little  left  to  greet  you,  of  me,  or  mine. 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

I  LIKE  to  meet  a  sweep — imderstand  me — not  a  grinvn 
sweeper — old  chinniey-sweepers  are  by  no  means  attract- 
ive— but  one  of  those  tender  novices,  blooming  through 
their  first  nigritude,  the  maternal  washings  not  quite 
effaced  from  the  cheek — such  as  come  forth  with  the 
dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with  their  little  professional 
notes  sounding  like  the  x^^^p-l^^^l^  of  ^  jo^^^g  sparrow ; 
or  liker  to  the  matin  lark  should  I  pronounce  them, 
in  their  aerial  ascents  not  seldom  anticipating  the 
sunrise  1 

I  have  a  kindly  yearning  towards  these  dim  specks — • 
poor  blots — innocent  blacknesses — 

I  reverence  these  young  Africans  of  our  own  growth — 
these  almost  clergy  imps,  who  sport  their  cloth  without 
assumption  ;  and  from  their  little  puljjits  (the  to])s  of 
chimneys),  in  the  nipping  air  of  a  December  morning, 
preach  a  lesson  of  patience  to  mankind. 

When  a  child,  what  a  mysterious  pleasure  it  w^as  to 
witness  their  operation  !  to  see  a  chit  no  bigger  than  one's- 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  149 

self,  enter,  one  knew  not  ]>y  what  proeess,  into  what 
seemed  the  fauces  Averni — to  pursue  him  in  imagination, 
as  he  went  sounding  on  through  so  many  dark  stifling 
caverns,  horrid  shades  !  to  shudder  with  the  idea  that 
"now,  siu-ely  he  must  be  lost  for  ever!" — to  revive 
at  hearing  his  feeble  shout  of  discovered  day-light — and 
then  (O  fulness  of  delight  !)  running  out  of  doors,  to 
come  just  in  time  to  see  the  sable  jihenomenon  emerge 
in  safety,  the  brandished  weapon  of  his  art  victorious 
like  some  flag  waved  over  a  conquered  citadel  !  I 
seem  to  rememlier  having  been  told,  that  a  bad  sweej? 
was  once  left  in  a  stack  with  his  brush,  to  indicate  which 
way  the  wind  blew.  It  was  an  awfid  spectacle,  certainly  ; 
not  miich  unlike  the  old  stage  direction  in  Llacbeth, 
where  the  "  Apparition  of  a  child  crowned,  with  a  tree  in 
his  hand,  rises." 

Reader,  if  thou  meetest  one  of  these  small  gentry  in 
thy  early  rambles,  it  is  good  to  give  him  a  penny, — it  is 
better  to  give  him  two-pence.  If  it  be  starving  Aveather, 
and  to  the  j^roper  troubles  of  his  hard  occupation,  a 
pair  of  kibed  heels  (no  unusual  accompaniment)  be  super- 
added, the  demand  on  thy  humanity  will  surely  rise  to  a 
tester. 

There  is  a  composition,  the  groimd-work  of  which  I 
have  miderstood  to  be  the  sweet  wood  'yclept  sassafras. 
This  wood  boiled  down  to  a  kind  of  tea,  and  tempered 
with  an  infasion  of  milk  and  sugar,  hath  to  some  tastes 
a  delicacy  beyond  the  China  luxmy.  I  know  not  how 
thy  jjalate  may  relish  it ;  for  myself,  with  every  defer- 
ence to  the  judicious  Mr.  Read,  who  hath  time  out  of 
mind  kept  open  a  shop  (the  only  one  he  avers  in  London) 
for  the  vending  of  this  "  wholesome  and  pleasant  bevei'- 
age,"  on  the  south  side  of  Fleet  Street,  as  thou  approach- 
est  Bridge  Street — the  only  Salojnan  house  —  I  have 
never  yet  adventured  to  dip  my  own  particular  lip  in  a 
basin  of  his  commended  ingredients — a  cautious  premoni- 
tion to  the  olfactories  constantly  whispering  to  me,  that 
my  stomach  must  infallibly,  with  all  due  com'tesy,  decline 


150  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

it.  Yet  I  have  seen  palates,  otherwise  not  uninstmcted 
in  dietetical  elegancies,  sup  it  up  with  avidity. 

I  know  not  by  what  particular  conformation  of  the 
organ  it  happens,  but  I  have  always  found  that  this  com- 
])()sition  is  smprisingly  gratifying  to  the  palate  of  a  young 
cliiinuey-swceper — -whether  the  oily  particles  (sassafras  is 
slightly  oleaginous)  do  attenuate  and  soften  the  fuliginous 
concretions,  which  are  sometimes  found  (in  dissections) 
to  adhere  to  the  roof  of  the  mouth  in  these  unfledged 
practitioners ;  or  whether  Nature,  sensible  that  she  had 
mingled  too  much  of  bitter  wood  in  the  lot  of  these  raw 
victims,  caused  to  grow  out  of  the  earth  her  sassafras  for 
a  sweet  lenitive — but  so  it  is,  that  no  possible  taste  or 
odour  to  the  senses  of  a  young  chimney-sweeper  can 
convey  a  delicate  excitement  comparable  to  this  mixture. 
Being  penniless,  they  will  yet  hang  their  black  heads 
over  the  ascending  steam,  to  gratify  one  sense  if  possible, 
seemingly  no  less  pleased  than  those  domestic  animals — 
cats — when  they  purr  over  a  new-found  sj^rig  of  valerian. 
There  is  something  more  in  these  sympathies  than  jjhilo- 
sophy  can  inculcate. 

Now  albeit  Mr.  Read  boasteth,  not  without  reason, 
that  his  is  the  only  Salopian  house  ;  yet  be  it  known  to 
thee,  reader — if  thou  art  one  who  keepest  what  are  called 
good  hours,  thou  art  haply  ignorant  of  the  fact — he  hath 
a  race  of  industrious  imitators,  who  from  stalls,  and 
under  open  sky,  dispense  the  same  savoury  mess  to 
humbler  customers,  at  that  dead  time  of  the  dawn,  when 
(as  extremes  meet)  the  rake,  reeling  home  from  his  mid- 
night cups,  and  the  hard-handed  artizan  leaving  his  bed 
to  resume  tlie  premature  labours  of  the  day,  jostle,  not 
luifrequently  to  the  manifest  disconcerting  of  the  former, 
for  the  honours  of  the  pavement.  It  is  the  time  when, 
in  sununer,  between  the  expired  and  the  not  yet  relu- 
mined  kitchen-fires,  the  kennels  of  our  fair  metropolis 
give  forth  their  least  satisfactory  odours.  The  rake,  who 
wisheth  to  dissipate  his  o'ernight  vapours  in  more  grate- 
ful coffee,  ciu'ses  the  ungcnial  fume,  as  he  passeth ;  but 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEErERS.  151 

the  artizan  stops  to  taste,  and  blesses  tlie  fragrant 
breakfast. 

This  is  snloop — the  precocious  herb-woman's  darling — 
the  delight  of  the  early  gardener,  who  transports  his 
smoking  cabbages  by  break  of  day  from  Hammersmith  to 
Covent  Garden's  filmed  piazzas — the  delight,  and  oh  !  I 
fear,  too  often  the  envy,  of  the  unpennied  sweep.  Him 
shoiddst  thou  haply  encoimter,  with  his  dim  \dsage  pen- 
dent over  the  grateful  steam,  regale  him  vnih.  a  sumptuous 
basin  (it  ^vill  cost  thee  but  three-halfpennies)  and  a  slice  of 
delicate  bread  and  butter  (an  added  halfpenny) — so  may 
thy  cidinary  fires,  eased  of  the  o'ercharged  secretions  from 
thy  worse-placed  hospitalities,  curl  up  a  lighter  volume 
to  the  welkin — so  may  the  descending  soot  never  taint 
thy  costly  well-ingredienced  soups — nor  the  odious  cry, 
quick-reaching  from  street  to  street,  of  the  fired  chimney, 
invite  the  rattling  engines  from  ten  adjacent  parishes,  to 
distiu-b  for  a  casual  scintillation  thy  peace  and  pocket ! 

I  am  by  natm'e  extremely  siLsceptible  of  street  ati'ronts  ; 
the  jeers  and  taunts  of  the  populace  ;  the  low-bred 
triumph  they  display  over  the  casual  trip,  or  splashed 
stocking,  of  a  gentleman.  Yet  can  I  endm-e  the  jocu- 
larity of  a  young  sweep  with  something  more  than 
forgiveness. — In  the  last  winter  but  one,  pacing  along 
Cheapside  wnth  my  accustomed  precipitation  when  I 
walk  westward,  a  treacherous  slide  brought  me  upon  my 
back  in  an  instant.  I  scrambled  up  with  pain  and  shame 
enough — yet  outwardly  trying  to  face  it  down,  as  if 
nothing  had  happened — when  the  roguish  grin  of  one  of 
these  young  wits  encountered  me.  There  he  stood, 
pointing  me  out  with  his  dusky  finger  to  the  mob,  and 
to  a  poor  woman  (I  suppose  his  mother)  in  particular, 
till  the  tears  for  the  exquisiteness  of  the  fim  (so  he 
thought  it)  worked  themselves  out  at  the  corners  of  his 
poor  red  eyes,  red  from  many  a  previous  weeping,  and 
soot-inflamed,    yet  twinkling  through    all  with   such   a 

joy,  snatched  out  of  desolation,  that  Hogarth but 

Hogartli  has  got  him  already  (how  could  he  miss  him  fj 


152  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

ill  the  Marcli  to  Fincliley,  grinning  at  the  pieman — there 
he  stood,  as  he  stands  in  the  iDicture,  irremovable,  as  if 
the  jest  was  to  last  for  ever — witli  such  a  maximum  of 
glee,  and  miuinium  of  mischief,  in  his  mirth — for  the 
grin  of  a  genuine  sweep  hath  absolutely  no  malice  in  it — • 
that  I  could  have  been  content,  if  the  honour  of  a  gentle- 
man might  endure  it,  to  ha^  j  remained  his  butt  and  his 
mockery  till  midnight. 

I  am  ])y  theory  obdurate  to  the  seductiveness  of  what 
are  called  a  fine  set  of  teeth.  Every  pair  of  rosy  lips 
(the  ladies  must  pardon  me)  is  a  casket  presumably  hold- 
ing such  jewels ;  but,  methinks,  they  shoidd  take  leave 
to  "  air  "  them  as  frugally  as  possible.  The  fine  lady,  or 
fiije  gentleman,  who  sliow  me  their  teeth,  show  me  bones. 
Yet  must  I  confess,  that  from  the  mouth  of  a  true  sweej) 
a  display  (even  to  ostentation)  of  those  white  and  sliiny 
ossifications,  strikes  me  as  an  agreeal)le  anomaly  in 
manners,  and  an  allowable  piece  of  foppery.     It  is,  as 

when 

A  sable  cloud 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night. 

It  is  like  some  remnant  of  gentry  not  quite  extinct ;  a 
badge  of  better  days;  a  hint  of  nol3ility :— and,  doubtless, 
under  the  obscuring  darkness  and  double  night  of  their 
forlorn  disguisement,  oftentimes  liu'keth  good  lilood,  and 
gentle  conditions,  derived  from  lost  ancestry,  and  a  lapsed 
pedigree.  The  premature  apprenticements  of  these 
tender  victims  give  but  too  much  encom-agement,  I  fear, 
to  clandestine  and  almost  infantile  abductions  ;  the  seeds 
of  civility  and  true  courtesy,  so  often  discernible  in  tliese 
young  grafts  (not  otherwise  to  be  accounted  for)  plainly 
hint  at  some  forced  adoptions ;  many  noble  Rachels 
mourning  for  their  children,  even  in  our  days,  countenance 
the  fact ;  the  tales  of  fairy  spiriting  may  shadow  a 
lamentable  verity,  and  the  recovery  of  the  young  Montagu 
\)v,  but  a  solitary  instance  of  good  fortune  out  of  many 
irreparable  and  ho])eless  dcfiliations. 

In  one  of  the  state-beds  at  Arundel  Castle,  a  few  years 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  153 

since — under  a  ducal  canop}' — (that  seat  of  the  Howards 
is  an  object  of  ciuiosity  to  visitors,  chiefly  for  its  beds, 
in  which  the  late  duke  was  especially  a  counoisseiu") — 
encircled  with  curtains  of  delicatest  crimson,  with  starry 
coronets  inwoven — folded  between  a  pair  of  sheets  whiter 
and  softer  than  the  lap  where  Venus  lulled  Ascanius — 
was  discovered  by  chance,  after  all  methods  of  search  had 
failed,  at  noon-day,  fast  asleep,  a  lost  chimney-sweeper. 
The  little  creatiu-e,  having  somehow  confounded  his  pass- 
age among  the  intricacies  of  those  lordly  chimneys,  by 
some  unknow^l  aperture  had  alighted  \[\m\  this  niagni- 
ficent  chamber  :  and,  tired  with  his  tedious  explorations, 
was  miable  to  resist  the  delicioiLs  iuvitement  to  repose, 
which  he  there  saw  exhibited ;  so  creeping  between  the 
sheets  very  quietty,  laid  his  black  head  upon  the  pillow, 
and  slept  like  a  young  Howard. 

Such  is  the  account  given  to  the  \isitors  at  the 
Castle. — But  I  cannot  help  seeming  to  perceive  a  confir- 
mation of  what  I  had  just  hinted  at  in  this  stor)^  A 
high  instinct  was  at  work  in  the  case,  or  I  am  mistaken. 
Is  it  probable  that  a  poor  child  of  that  description,  with 
whatever  weariness  he  might  be  visited,  would  have 
ventm-ed,  under  such  a  penalty  as  he  would  be  taught  to 
expect,  to  imcover  the  sheets  of  a  Duke's  bed,  and 
deliberately  to  lay  himself  do-mi  between  them,  when  the 
nig,  or  the  carpet,  presented  an  ob-sious  couch,  still  far 
above  his  pretensions — is  this  probable,  I  would  ask,  if 
the  great  power  of  nature,  which  I  contend  for,  had  not 
been  manifested  -n-ithin  him,  prompting  to  the  adventiue  ? 
Doubtless  this  young  nobleman  (for  such  my  mind  mis- 
gives me  that  he  must  be)  was  allm-ed  by  some  memoiy, 
not  amounting  to  fuU  consciousness,  of  his  condition  in 
infancy,  when  he  was  used  to  be  lapped  by  his  mother, 
or  his  nurse,  in  just  such  sheets  as  he  there  foimd,  into 
which  he  was  now  but  creeping  back  as  into  his  proper 
inainahula,  and  resting-place. — By  no  other  theory  than 
by  this  sentiment  of  a  pre-existent  state  (as  I  may  call 
it),  can  I  explain  a  deed  so  venturous,  and,  indeed,  upon 


ir)4  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

any   other    system,   so    indecorous,   in    this    tender,    Init 
unseasonable,  sleejier. 

My  pleasant  friend  Jem  White  was  so  im})ressed  with 
a  belief  of  metamorphoses  like  this  frequently  taking 
place,  that  in  some  sort  to  reverse  the  wrongs  of  fortune 
in  these  poor  changelings,  he  instituted  an  annual  feast 
of  chimney-sweepers,  at  which  it  was  his  pleasure  to 
officiate  as  host  and  waiter.  It  wa-s  a  solemn  supper 
held  in  Smitlifield,  upon  the  yearly  return  of  the  fair  of 
St.  Bartholomew.  Cards  were  issued  a  week  before  to 
the  master-sweeps  in  and  about  the  metropolis,  confining 
the  invitation  to  their  younger  fry.  Now  and  then  an 
elderly  stripling  would  get  in  among  us,  and  be  good- 
naturedly  winked  at ;  but  our  main  body  were  infantry. 
One  unfortunate  wight,  indeed,  who,  relyiug  upon  his 
dusky  suit,  had  intruded  himself  into  our  party,  but  by 
tokens  was  providentially  discovered  in  time  to  be  no 
chimney-sweeper,  (all  is  not  soot  which  looks  so,)  was 
quoited  out  of  the  presence  with  universal  indignation,  as 
not  having  on  the  wedding  garment ;  but  in  general  the 
greatest  harmony  prevailed.  The  place  chosen  was  a 
convenient  spot  among  the  pens,  at  the  north  side  of  the 
fair,  not  so  far  distant  as  to  be  impervious  to  the  agree- 
able hubbul?  of  that  vanity,  but  remote  enough  not  to  be 
obvious  to  the  interruption  of  every  gaping  spectator  in 
it.  The  guests  assembled  about  seven.  In  those  little 
temporary  parlours  three  tables  were  spread  with  napery, 
not  so  fine  as  substantial,  and  at  every  board  a  comely 
hostess  presided  with  her  pan  of  hissing  sausages.  The 
nostrils  of  the  young  rogues  dilated  at  the  savour. 
James  White,  as  head  waiter,  had  charge  of  the  first 
table  ;  and  myself,  with  our  trusty  companion  Bigod, 
ordinarily  ministered  to  the  other  two.  There  was 
clambering  and  jostling,  you  may  be  sure,  who  should 
get  at  the  first  table,  for  Rochester  in  his  maddest  days 
coidd  not  have  done  the  humours  of  the  scene  with  more 
spirit  than  my  friend.  After  some  general  expression  of 
thanks  for  the  honour  the  comi^any  had  done  him,  his 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  155 

iuaugural  cercnioiiy  was  to  clasp  the  greasy  waist  of  old 
dame  Ursula  (the  fattest  of  the  three),  that  stood  frying 
and  fretting,  half-blessing,  half-ciu'sing  "  the  gentleman," 
and  imprint  upon  her  chaste  lips  a  tender  salute,  whereat 
the  universal  host  would  set  up  a  shout  that  tore  the 
concave,  while  hundreds  of  grinning  teeth  startled  the 
night  with  their  brightness.  0  it  was  a  pleasiu'e  to  see 
the  sable  younkers  lick  in  the  unctuous  meat,  with  his 
more  unctuous  sayings — how  he  would  fit  the  tit-bits  to 
the  puny  mouths,  reserving  the  lengthier  links  for  the 
seniors — how  he  woidd  intercept  a  morsel  even  in  the 
jaws  of  some  young  desperado,  declaring  it  "  must  to  the 
pan  again  to  be  browned,  for  it  was  not  fit  for  a  gentle- 
man's eating" — how  he  woidd  recommend  this  slice  of 
white  bread,  or  that  piece  of  kissing-crust,  to  a  tender 
juvenile,  advising  them  all  to  have  a  care  of  cracking 
their  teeth,  which  were  their  best  patrimony, — how 
genteelly  he  would  deal  about  the  small  ale,  as  if  it  were 
wine,  naming  the  brewer,  and  protesting,  if  it  were  not 
good,  he  should  lose  their  custom ;  with  a  special  recom- 
mendation to  wipe  the  lip  before  drinking.  Then  we  had 
our  toasts — "the  King," — "the  Cloth," — which,  whether 
they  understood  or  not,  was  equally  diverting  and  flatter- 
ing ;  and  for  a  crowning  sentiment,  which  never  fixiled, 
"  May  the  Brush  supersede  the  Lam-el ! "  All  these, 
and  fifty  other  foncies,  which  were  rather  felt  than  com- 
preliended  by  his  guests,  would  he  utter,  standing  upon 
tables,  and  prefacing  every  sentiment  with  a  "Gentlemen, 
give  me  leave  to  prof^ose  so  and  so,"  which  was  a  pro- 
digious comfort  to  those  young  orphans  ;  every  now  and 
then  stufiing  into  his  mouth  (for  it  did  not  do  to  be 
squeamish  on  these  occasions)  indiscriminate  pieces  of 
those  reeking  sausages,  which  pleased  them  mightily,  and 
was  the  savouriest  part,  you  may  believe,  of  the  enter- 
tainment. 

Golden  lads  and  lasses  must, 

As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust — 

James  White  is  extinct,  and  with  liim  these  suppers 


156  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

have  long  ceased.  He  carried  away  with  liim  half  the 
fun  of  the  world  when  he  died — of  my  world  at  least. 
His  old  clients  loolc  for  him  among  the  pens ;  and,  miss- 
ing him,  reproach  the  altered  feast  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
and  the  glory  of  Smithfield  departed  for  ever. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS, 

IN  THE  METROPOLIS. 

The  all-sweeping  besom  of  societariau  reformation — your, 
only  modern  Alcides'  club  to  rid  the  time  of  its  abuses^ 
is  uplift  with  many-handed  sway  to  extirpate  the  last 
fluttering  tatters  of  the  bugbear  Mendicity  from  the 
meti'opolis.  Scrips,  wallets,  bags  —  staves,  dogs,  and 
crutches — the  whole  mendicant  fraternity,  with  all  their 
baggage,  are  fast  posting  out  of  the  purlieus  of  this 
eleventh  persecution.  From  the  crowded  crossing,  from 
the  corners  of  streets  and  turnings  of  alleys,  the  parting 
Genius  of  Beggary  is  ""n^tll  sighing  sent." 

I  do  not  approve  of  this  wholesale  going  to  work,  this 
impertinent  crusado,  or  helium  ad  exterminationcm,  pro- 
claimed against  a  species.  Much  good  might  be  sucked 
from  these  Beggars. 

They  were  the  oldest  and  the  honom'ablest  form  of 
pauperism.  Their  appeals  were  to  our  common  nature ; 
less  revolting  to  an  ingenuous  mind  than  to  be  a  suppliant 
to  the  particular  humoiu's  or  cajirice  of  any  fellow-creature, 
or  set  of  fellow-creatures,  parochial  or  societarian.  Theirs 
were  the  only  rates  uuinvidious  in  the  levy,  ungrudged 
in  the  assessment. 

There  was  a  dignity  springing  from  the  very  depth  of 
their  desolation  ;  as  to  be  naked  is  to  be  so  much  nearer 
to  the  l:)eing  a  man,  than  to  go  in  livery. 

The  greatest  spirits  have  felt  this  in  their  reverses ; 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS,      lot 

and  when  Dionysius  from  king  turned  sehoolmaster,  do 
we  feel  anything  towards  him  Imt  contempt  1  Could 
Vandyke  have  made  a  pictiu'e  of  him,  swaying  a  ferula 
for  a  sceptre,  which  would  have  affected  our  minds  with 
the  same  heroic  pity,  the  same  compassionate  admiration, 
w4th  which  we  regard  his  Belisarius  begging  for  an  oholns  'I 
Woidd  the  moral  have  been  more  graceful,  more  pathetic  % 

The  Blind  Beggar  in  the  legend — the  fother  of  pretty 
Bessy — whose  story  doggrel  rhymes  and  ale-house  signs 
cannot  so  degrade  or  attenuate  but  that  some  sparks  of  a 
lustrous  spirit  will  shine  through  the  disgiusements — this 
noble  Earl  of  Cornwall  (as  indeed  he  was)  and  memorable 
sport  of  fortime,  fleeing  from  the  unjust  sentence  of  his 
liege  lord,  strijjt  of  all,  and  seated  on  the  flowering  green 
of  Bethnal,  witli  his  more  fresh  and  springing  daughter 
by  his  side,  illiunining  his  rags  and  his  beggary — woidd 
the  child  and  parent  have  cut  a  better  figure  doing  the 
honours  of  a  counter,  or  expiating  their  fallen  condition  upon 
the  three-foot  eminence  of  some  sempstering  shop-board  % 

In  tale  or  history  your  Beggar  is  ever  the  just  antipode 
to  your  King.  The  poets  and  romancical  writers  (as  dear 
Margaret  Newcastle  woiild  call  them),  when  they  woidd 
most  sharply  and  feelingly  paint  a  reverse  of  fortune, 
never  stop  till  they  have  bniught  down  their  hero  in  good 
earnest  to  rags  and  the  wallet.  The  depth  of  the  descent 
illustrates  the  height  he  falls  from.  There  is  no  medium 
which  can  be  presented  to  the  imagination  without  offence. 
There  is  no  breaking  the  fixll.  Lear,  thrown  from  his 
palace,  mitst  divest  him  of  his  garments,  till  he  answer 
"mere  nature;"  and  Cresseid,  fallen  from  a  prince's  love, 
must  extend  her  pale  arms,  pale  with  other  whiteness 
than  of  beauty,  supplicating  lazar  arms  with  bell  and 
clap-dish. 

The  Lucian  wits  knew  this  very  well ;  and,  wnth  a  con- 
verse policy,  wdien  they  would  express  scorn  of  greatness 
without  the  pity,  they  show  us  an  Alexander  in  the  shades 
cobbling  shoes,  or  a  Semiramis  getting  up  foul  linen. 

How  would  it  sound  in  song,  that  a  great  monarch  had 


158  TllK   KS.SAYS  OF  ELIA. 

declined  liis  ;dIc(:tioiis  u|iuii  the  d;ui,!j,liter  of  ii  baker!  yet 
do  wc  feel  tlu;  iiiiiiniiiatiim  ;it  all  violated  when  wc  read 
the  "  true  ballad,"  where  King  Cophetua  woos  the  beggar 
maid  1 

Pauperism,  pan])er,  poor  nran,  are  cxjM'essions  of  inty, 
but  pity  alloyed  with  eontempt.  No  one  properly  con- 
temns a  Beggar.  Poverty  is  a  comparative  thing,  and 
each  degree  of  it  is  mocked  by  its  "neighbour  grice." 
Its  poor  rents  and  comings-in  are  soon  summed  up  and 
told.  Its  pretences  to  propei'ty  are  almost  ludi(;rous. 
Its  pitiful  attempts  to  save  excite  a  smile.  Every 
scornful  companion  can  weigh  his  trifle -bigger  purse 
against  it.  Poor  man  reproaches  poor  man  in  the  streets 
with  impolitic  mention  of  his  condition,  his  own  being  a 
shade  bcttei-,  while  the  rich  pass  by  and  jeer  at  both. 
No  rascally  comparative  insults  a  Beggar,  or  thinks  of 
weighing  purses  with  him.  He  is  not  in  the  scale  of 
comparison.  He  is  not  under  the  measm-e  of  property. 
He  confessedly  hath  none,  any  more  than  a  dog  or  a 
sheep.  No  one  twittcth  him  with  ostentation  above  his 
means.  No  one  accuses  him  of  pride,  or  upbraideth  him 
with  mock  humility.  None  jostle  with  him  for  the  wall, 
or  pick  quarrels  for  precedency.  No  wealthy  neighbour 
seeketh  to  eject  him  from  his  tenement.  No  man  sues 
him.  No  man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were  not  the 
independent  gentleman  that  I  am,  rather  than  I  woidd 
be  a  retainer  to  the  great,  a  led  captain,  or  a  poor  rela- 
tion, I  woidd  choose,  out  of  the  delicacy  and  true  great- 
ness of  my  mind,  to  be  a  Beggar. 

Rags,  which  are  the  reproach  of  poverty,  are  the 
Beggar's  robes,  and  graceful  insignia  of  his  profession, 
his  tenure,  his  full  dress,  the  suit  in  which  he  is  expected 
to  show  himself  in  public.  He  is  never  out  of  the  fashion, 
or  limpeth  awkwardly  behind  it.  He  is  not  required  to 
put  on  court  mourning.  He  weareth  all  colours,  fearing 
none.  His  costume  hath  undergone  less  change  than  the 
Quaker's.  He  is  the  only  man  in  the  universe  who  is  not 
obliged  to  study  appearances.     The  ups  and  downs  of  the 


A  COMPLAINT  <»K  THE  DECAY  Ol'  liE(;c;AUS.     159 

world  coiK-cni  liiiii  im  loiiyer.  He  ulmic  coiitimii'th  iu 
one  stay.  The  jniec  of  .stock  oi-  laud  atieetetli  liini  not. 
The  fluctiiations  of  agrieultnral  or  coniuiereial  prosperity 
touch  him  not,  or  at  worst  but  change  his  customers. 
He  is  not  expected  to  become  bail  or  siu-ety  for  any  one. 
No  man  troubleth  him  with  questioning  his  religion  or 
politics.     He  is  the  only  free  man  in  the  imiverse. 

The  Mendicants  of  this  great  city  were  so  many  of  her 
sights,  her  lions.  I  can  no  more  spare  them  than  I  could 
the  Cries  of  London.  No  corner  of  a  street  is  complete 
without  them.  They  are  as  indispensable  as  the  Ballad 
Singer ;  and  in  their  i)icturesque  attire  as  ornamental  as 
the  signs  of  old  London.  They  were  the  standing  morals, 
emblems,  mementoes,  dial-mottoes,  the  spital  sermons,  the 
books  for  children,  the  salutary  checks  and  pauses  to  the 
high  and  rushing  tide  of  greasy  citizenry — 

Look 


Upon  that  poor  and  broken  iDaiiknipt  there. 

Above  all,  those  old  blind  Tobits  that  used  to  line  the 
wall  of  Lincoln's-inn  Garden,  l)efore  modern  fastidiousness 
had  expelled  them,  casting  up  their  ruined  orbs  to  catch 
a  ray  of  pity,  and  (if  possible)  of  light,  with  their  faithful 
Dog  Guide  at  their  feet, — whither  are  they  fled  1  or  into 
what  corners,  ])lind  as  themselves,  have  they  been  driven, 
out  of  the  wholesome  air  and  sun -warmth^  immersed 
between  four  walls,  in  what  withering  poor-house  do  they 
endiu-e  the  penalty  of  dt)uble  darkness,  where  the  chink 
of  the  dropt  halfi:)enny  no  more  consoles  their  forlorn 
bereavement,  for  from  the  sound  of  the  cheerful  and 
hope-stirring  tread  of  the  passenger  1  Where  hang  their 
useless  staves  1  and  who  will  farm  their  dogs  1 — Have  the 
overseers  of  St.  L —  caused  them  to  be  shot  1  or  were 
they  tied  up  in  sacks  and  dropt  into  the  Thames,  at  the 

suggestion  of  B —  the  mild  rector  of 1 

Well  fare  the  soul  of  unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne, — 
most  classical,  and,  at  the  same  time,  most  English  of 
the  Latinists  ! — who  has  treated   of  this   human  and 


160  TIIF.   ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

qua(lruj)L'(l;il  alliance,  this  dog  and  man  friciuLshii),  in  tlu; 
sweetest  of  his  poems,  the  Epitaphinm  in  Ganem,  or, 
Doff's  Epitaph.  Reader,  peruse  it ;  and  say,  if  customary 
sights,  which  could  call  up  such  gentle  poetry  as  this, 
were  of  a  nature  to  do  more  harm  or  good  to  the  moral 
sense  of  the  passengers  through  the  daily  thoroughfares 
of  a  vast  and  busy  metropolis. 

Pauperis  liiu  Iri  requiesco  Lyciscus,  lierilis, 

Dum  vixi,  tutela  vigil  coluraenque  seuectffi, 

Dux  caeco  fldu.s :  iiec,  me  ducente,  solebat, 

Prseteuso  hinc  atque  hiiic  baculo,  per  iuiqua  locorum 

lueertaui  explorare  viani ;  sed  tila  secutus, 

QuiB  dubios  regerent  passus,  vestigia  tuta 

Fixit  inoffenso  gre.ssu  ;  gelidumque  sedile 

111  iiudo  iiactus  saxo,  qua  prreteveuntiuni 

Uiida  frequeus  coulluxit,  ibi  miserisque  tenebras 

Lameiitis,  iioctenique  oculis  ploravit  obortam. 

Ploravit  nee  frustra ;  oboluni  dedit  alter  et  alter, 

Quels  corda  et  menteni  indiderat  natura  benignam. 

Ad  latus  iuterea  jacui  sopitus  herile, 

Vel  mediis  vigil  in  soinnis  ;  ad  lierilia  jussa 

Auresque  atcpie  animuin  arrectus,  seu  frustula  aniice 

Porrexit  sociasque  dapes,  seu  longa  diei 

Ttcdia  perpessus,  reditum  sub  nocte  parabat. 

Hi  mores,  lirec  vita  fuit,  dum  fata  sinebant, 
Dam  neque  languebam  morbis,  nee  inerte  senecta 
QuPG  tandem  obrepsit,  veterique  satellite  ceecuni 
Orbavit  dominum  ;  prisci  sed  gratia  facti 
Ne  tota  intereat,  longos  deleta  per  annos, 
Exiguum  liunc  Irus  tumulum  de  cespite  fecit, 
Etsi  inopis,  iion  ingratfe,  innnuseula  dex-trre ; 
Carmine  signavitque  brevi,  dominunique  canemque, 
Quod  memoret,  fidumqne  Canem  dominunique  Benignum. 

Poor  Irus'  faithful  wolf-dog  here  I  lie, 

That  wont  to  tend  my  old  blind  master's  steps, 

His  guide  and  guard ;  nor,  while  my  service  lasted, 

Had  he  occasion  for  that  staff,  with  wliich 

He  now  goes  picking  out  his  path  in  fear 

Over  the  liighways  and  crossings ;  but  would  plant, 

Safe  in  the  conduct  of  my  friendly  string, 

A  firm  foot  forward  still,  till  he  had  reach'd 

His  poor  seat  on  some  stone,  nigh  where  the  tide 

Of  passers-by  in  thickest  confluence  flow'd : 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.   161 

To  whom  with  loud  and  passionate  laments 

From  morn  to  eve  his  dark  estate  he  wail'd. 

Nor  wail'd  to  all  in  vain :  some  here  and  there, 

The  well-disposed  and  good,  their  pennies  gave. 

I  meantime  at  his  feet  obsequious  slept ; 

Not  all-asleep  in  sleep,  but  heai't  and  ear 

Prick'd  up  at  his  least  motion ;  to  receive 

At  liis  kind  hand  my  customary  crumbs, 

And  common  portion  in  his  feast  of  scraps  ; 

Or  when  night  warn'd  us  homeward,  tired  and  spent 

With  our  long  day  and  tedious  beggary. 

These  were  my  manners,  this  my  way  of  life 
Till  age  and  slow  disease  me  overtook. 
And  sever'd  from  my  sightless  master's  side. 
But  lest  the  grace  of  so  good  deeds  should  die, 
Through  tract  of  years  in  mute  oblivion  lost. 
This  slender  tomb  of  turf  hath  Irus  reared. 
Cheap  monument  of  no  ungrudging  hand, 
And  \\ith  short  verse  inscribed  it,  to  attest, 
In  long  and  lasting  union  to  attest. 
The  virtues  of  the  Beggar  and  his  Dog. 

These  dim  eyes  have  in  vain  explored  for  some  months 
past  a  well-known  figure,  or  part  of  the  figure,  of  a  man, 
who  used  to  glide  his  comely  upper  half  over  the  pave- 
ments of  London,  wheeling  along  with  most  ingenious 
celerity  upon  a  machine  of  wood ;  a  spectacle  to  natives, 
to  foreigners,  and  to  children.  He  was  of  a  robust  make, 
with  a  florid  sailor-like  complexion,  and  his  head  was  bare 
to  the  storm  and  smishine.  He  was  a  natimil  ciu'iosity, 
a  specidation  to  the  scientific,  a  prodigy  to  the  simple. 
The  infant  would  stare  at  tlie  mighty  man  brought  down 
to  his  own  level.  The  common  cripple  wovdd  despise  his 
own  pusillanimity,  \aewing  the  hale  stoutness,  and  hearty 
heart,  of  this  half- limbed  giant.  Few  but  must  have 
noticed  him ;  for  the  accident  which  brought  him  low 
took  i^lace  diuing  the  riots  of  1780,  and  he  has  been  a 
groimdling  so  long.  He  seemed  earth-born,  an  Antteus, 
and  to  suck  in  fresh  vigour  from  the  soil  which'  he  neigh- 
boiu-ed.  He  was  a  grand  fragment ;  as  good  as  an  Elgin 
marble.  The  natm-e,  which  shoidd  have  recraited  his 
reft  legs  and  thighs,  was  not  lost,  but  only  retired  into 
M 


1G2  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

his  upper  parts,  and  he  was  half  a  Hercules.  I  heard  a 
tremendous  voice  thundering  and  growling,  as  before  an 
earthquake,  and  casting  down  my  eyes,  it  was  this  man- 
drake reviling  a  steed  that  had  started  at  his  portentous 
appearance.  He  seemed  to  want  but  his  just  stature  to 
have  rent  the  offending  quadruped  in  shivers.  He  was  as 
the  man-part  of  a  centaur,  from  which  the  horse -half  had 
been  cloven  in  some  dire  Lapithan  controversy.  He 
moved  on,  as  if  he  ct)uld  have  made  shift  with  yet  half  of 
the  body- portion  which  was  left  him.  The  os  sublime 
was  not  wanting ;  and  he  threw  out  yet  a  jolly  counte- 
nance upon  the  heavens.  Forty-and-two  years  had  he  driven 
this  out-of-door  trade,  and  now  that  his  hair  is  grizzled  in 
the  service,  but  his  good  spirits  no  way  impaired,  because 
he  is  not  content  to  exchange  his  free  air  and  exercise  for 
the  restraints  of  a  poor-house,  he  is  expiating  his  contu- 
macy in  one  of  those  houses  (ironically  christened)  of 
Correction. 

Was  a  daily  spectacle  like  this  to  be  deemed  a  nui- 
sance, which  called  for  legal  interference  to  remove  1  or 
not  rather  a  salutary  and  a  touching  object  to  the  jjassers- 
by  in  a  great  city  %  Among  her  shows,  her  museums,  and 
supplies  for  ever-gaping  curiosity  (and  what  else  but  an 
accumulation  of  siglits — endless  sights — -is  a  great  city  ; 
or  for  what  else  is  it  desirable  ?)  was  there  not  room  for 
one  Lusus  (not  Natm^ce,  indeed,  but)  Accidentium  ? 
What  if  in  forty-and-two-years'  going  about,  the  man  had 
scraped  together  enough  to  give  a  portion  to  his  child  (as 
the  rumour  ran)  of  a  few  hundreds — whom  had  he  injured  1 
— whom  had  he  imposed  upon  1  The  contributors  had 
enjoyed  their  sight  for  their  pennies.  What  if  after  being 
exposed  all  day  to  the  heats,  the  rains,  and  the  frosts  of 
heaven — shuffling  his  ungainly  tnuik  along  in  an  elaborate 
and  painful  motion — he  was  enabled  to  retire  at  night  to 
enjoy  himself  at  a  club  of  his  fellow  cripples  over  a  dish 
of  hot  meat  and  vegetables,  as  the  charge  was  gravely 
brought  against  him  by  a  clergyman  deposing  before  a 
House  of  Commons'  Committee — was  this,  or  Avas  his 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.      163 

tnily  paternal  consideration,  which  (if  a  fact)  desers'cd  a 
statue  rather  than  a  Avhipping-post,  and  is  inconsistent,  at 
least,  with  the  exaggeration  of  nocturnal  orgies  which  he 
has  been  slandered  with — a  reason  that  he  should  be  de- 
prived of  his  chosen,  harmless,  nay,  edifying  way  of  life, 
and  be  committed  in  hoary  age  for  a  stm'dy  vagabond  '?— 

There  was  a  Yorick  once,  whom  it  would  not  have 
shamed  to  have  sate  down  at  the  cripples'  feast,  and  to 
have  thrown  in  his  benediction,  ay,  and  his  mite  too, 
for  a  companionable  symbol.  "  Age,  thou  hast  lost  thy 
breed." — 

Half  of  these  stories  about  the  prodigious  fortunes  made 
by  begging  are  (I  verily  believe)  misers'  calumnies.  One 
was  much  talked  of  in  the  public  papers  some  time  since, 
and  the  usual  charitable  inferences  deduced.  A  clerk  in 
the  Bank  was  siu'prised  ^nth  the  announcement  of  a  five- 
himcb'ed-poimd  legacy  left  him  by  a  person  whose  name 
he  was  a  stranger  to.  It  seems  that  in  his  daily  morning 
walks  from  Peckliam  (or  some  village  thereabouts)  where 
he  lived,  to  his  office,  it  had  been  his  j^ractice  for  the  last 
twenty  years  to  drop  his  halfpenny  duly  into  the  hat  of 
some  blind  Bartimeus,  that  sate  begging  alms  by  tlie  way- 
side in  the  Borough.  The  good  old  beggar  recognised  his 
daily  benefactor  by  the  voice  only ;  and,  when  he  died, 
left  all  the  amassings  of  his  alms  (that  had  been  half  a 
centmy  perhaps  in  the  accumulating)  to  his  old  Bank 
friend.  Was  this  a  story  to  pm-se  up  people's  hearts,  and 
pennies,  against  giving  an  alms  to  the  blind  1 — or  not 
rather  a  beautiful  moral  of  well-dii-ected  charity  on  the 
one  part,  and  noble  gratitude  iipon  the  other? 

I  sometimes  wish  I  had  been  that  Bank  clerk. 

I  seem  to  remember  a  poor  old  grateful  kind  of  creature, 
blinking  and  looking  up  with  his  no  eyes  in  the  sun — 

Is  it  possible  I  coiild  have  steeled  my  purse  against 
him  ? 

Perhaps  I  had  no  small  change. 

Reader,  do  not  be  frightened  at  the  hard  words  impo- 
sition, imposture — give,  and  ask  no  questio7is.     Cast  thy 


1G4  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

bread  upon  tlie  waters.     Some  have  unawares  (like  tliis 
Bank  clerk)  entertained  angels. 

Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted  dis- 
tress. Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor  creature 
(outwardly  and  visibly  such)  comes  before  thee,  do  not 
stay  to  inquire  whether  the  "  seven  small  children,"  in 
whose  name  he  implores  thy  assistance,  have  a  veritable 
existence.  Kake  not  into  the  bowels  of  unwelcome  truth 
to  save  a  halfpenny.  It  is  good  to  believe  him.  If  he 
be  not  all  that  he  pretendeth,  give,  and  under  a  personate 
father  of  a  family,  think  (if  thou  pleasest)  that  thou  hast 
relieved  an  indigent  bachelor.  When  they  come  with 
their  counterfeit  looks  and  mumjDing  tones,  think  them 
players.  You  pay  your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign 
these  things,  which,  concerning  these  poor  people,  thou 
canst  not  certainly  tell  whether  they  are  feigned  or  not. 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG. 

Mankind,  says  a  Chinese  manuscript,  which  my  friend 
M.  was  obliging  enough  to  read  and  explain  to  me,  for 
the  first  seventy  thousand  ages  ate  their  meat  raw,  claw- 
ing or  biting  it  froni  the  living  animal,  just  as  they  do  in 
Abyssinia  to  this  day.  This  period  is  not  obsciu'ely  hinted 
at  by  their  great  Confucius  in  the  second  chapter  of  his 
Mundane  Mutations,  where  he  designates  a  kind  of  golden 
age  by  the  tenn  Cho-fang,  literally  the  Cooks'  Holiday. 
The  manuscript  goes  on  to  say,  that  the  art  of  roasting, 
or  rather  broiling  (which  I  take  to  be  the  elder  brother) 
was  accidentally  discovered  in  the  manner  following. 
The  swine-herd,  Ho-ti,  having  gone  out  into  the  woods 
one  morning,  as  his  manner  was,  to  collect  mast  for  his 
hogs,  left  his  cottage  in  the  care  of  his  eldest  son  Bo-bo, 
a  great  lubberly  boy,  who  being  fond  of  i)laying  with  fire, 
as  yoimkers  of  his  age  commonly  are,  let  some  sparks 


A  DISSERTATION   UPON  ROAST  TIG.  165 

escape  into  a,  bundle  of  straw,  which  kindling  quickly, 
spread  the  conflagration  over  every  part  of  their  poor 
mansion,  till  it  was  reduced  to  ashes.  Together  with  the 
cottage  (a  sony  antediluvian  make-shift  of  a  building,  you 
may  think  it),  what  was  of  much  more  importance,  a  fine 
litter  of  new-farrowed  pigs,  no  less  than  nine  in  number, 
perished.  China  pigs  have  been  esteemed  a  luxiuy  all 
over  the  East,  from  the  remotest  periods  that  we  read  of. 
Bo-bo  was  in  the  utmost  consternation,  as  you  may  think, 
not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  tenement,  which  his 
father  and  he  could  easily  build  up  again  with  a  few  dry 
branches,  and  the  labom*  of  an  hoiu"  or  two,  at  any  time, 
as  for  the  loss  of  the  pigs.  While  he  was  thinking  what 
he  should  say  to  his  father,  and  wringing  his  hands  over 
the  smoking  remnants  of  one  of  those  untimely  sufferers, 
an  odour  assailed  his  nostrils,  unlike  any  scent  which  he 
had  before  experienced.  What  could  it  proceed  from  1 — 
not  from  the  burnt  cottage — he  had  smelt  that  smell 
before — indeed,  this  was  by  no  means  the  first  accident  of 
the  kind  which  had  occiu-red  through  the  negligence  of 
this  unlucky  young  firebrand.  Much  less  did  it  resemble 
that  of  any  known  herb,  weed,  or  flower.  A  premonitory 
moistening  at  the  same  time  overflowed  his  nether  lip. 
He  knew  not  what  to  think.  He  next  stooped  down  to 
feel  the  pig,  if  there  were  any  signs  of  life  in  it.  He 
burnt  his  fingers,  and  to  cool  them  he  applied  them  in  his 
booby  fashion  to  his  mouth.  Some  of  the  crumbs  of  the 
scorched  skin  had  come  away  with  his  fingers,  and  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  (in  the  world's  life  indeed,  for  before 
him  no  man  had  known  it)  he  tasted — cracldingf  Again 
he  felt  and  fumbled  at  the  pig.  It  did  not  burn  him  so 
much  now,  still  he  licked  his  fingers  from  a  sort  of  habit. 
The  truth  at  length  broke  into  his  slow  understanding, 
that  it  was  the  pig  that  smelt  so,  and  the  pig  that  tasted 
so  delicious  ;  and  surrendering  himself  up  to  the  new- 
born pleasure,  he  fell  to  tearing  up  whole  handfids  of  the 
scorched  skin  with  the  flesh  next  it,  and  was  cramming 
it  down  his  throat  in  his  beastly  fashion,  when  his  sire 


166  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

entered  ainid  the  smoking  rafters,  armed  with  retributory 
cudgel,  and  finding  how  affairs  stood,  began  to  rain  lilows 
ujjon  the  young  rogue's  shoulders,  as  thick  as  hail-stones, 
which  Bo-bo  heeded  not  any  more  than  if  they  had  been 
flies.  The  tickling  pleasm-e,  which  he  experienced  in  his 
lower  regions,  had  rendered  him  quite  callous  to  any  in- 
conveniences he  might  feel  in  those  remote  quarters.  His 
father  might  lay  on,  but  he  could  not  beat  him  from  his 
pig,  till  he  had  f;iirly  made  an  end  of  it,  when,  becoming 
a  little  more  sensible  of  his  situation,  something  like  the 
following  dialogue  ensued. 

"  You  graceless  whelp,  what  have  you  got  there  de- 
vouring 1  Is  it  not  enough  that  you  have  bm-nt  me  down 
tlii'ee  houses  with  your  dog's  tricks,  and  be  hanged  to 
you  !  but  you  must  be  eating  fire,  and  I  know  not  what 
— what  have  you  got  there,  I  sayf 

"  0  father,  the  pig,  the  pig  !  do  come  and  taste  how 
nice  the  burnt  pig  eats." 

The  ears  of  Ho-ti  tingled  with  horror.  He  cursed  his 
son,  and  he  cursed  hhnself  that  ever  he  should  beget  a 
son  that  should  eat  burnt  pig. 

Bo-bo,  whose  scent  was  wonderfully  shar})ened  since 
morning,  soon  raked  out  another  pig,  and  fairly  rending  it 
asunder,  thrust  the  lesser  half  by  main  force  into  the  fists 
of  Ho-ti,  still  shouting  out,  "  Eat,  eat,  eat  the  burnt  pig, 
father,  only  taste — 0  Lord  !" — with  such-like  barbarous 
ejaciilatious,  cramming  all  the  while  as  if  he  woidd  choke. 

Ho-ti  trembled  every  joint  while  he  grasped  the  abom- 
inable thing,  wavering  whether  he  should  not  put  his  son 
to  death  for  an  unnatural  young  monster,  when  the  crack- 
ling scorching  his  fingers,  as  it  had  done  his  son's,  and 
applying  the  same  remedy  to  them,  he  in  his  tiu-n  tasted 
some  of  its  flavour,  which,  make  what  sour  mouths  he 
would  for  a  pretence,  proved  not  altogether  disi^leasing 
to  him.  In  conclusion  (for  the  manuscript  here  is  a  little 
tedious),  both  father  and  son  fairly  set  down  to  the  mess, 
and  never  left  off"  till  they  had  despatched  all  that  re- 
mained of  the  litter. 


A  DISSERTATION   UPON  ROAST  PIG.  167 

Bo-bo  was  strictly  enjoined  not  to  let  the  secret  escape, 
for  the  ueighboiu's  would  certainly  have  stoned  them  for 
a  couple  of  abominable  wretches,  who  could  think  of  im- 
pro^^ug  upon  the  good  meat  which  God  had  sent  them. 
Nevertheless,  strange  stories  got  about.  It  was  observed 
that  Ho-ti's  cottage  was  bm'ut  down  now  more  frequently 
than  ever.  Nothing  but  fires  from  this  time  forward. 
Some  woidd  break  out  in  broad  day,  others  in  the  night- 
time. As  often  as  the  sow  fan'owed,  so  sm-e  was  the  house 
of  Ho-ti  to  be  in  a  blaze ;  and  Ho-ti  himself,  which  was 
the  more  remarkable,  instead  of  chastising  his  son,  seemed 
to  gi'ow  more  indulgent  to  liim  than  ever.  At  length  they 
were  watched,  the  terrible  mystery  discovered,  and  father 
and  son  summoned  to  take  their  trial  at  Pekin,  then  an 
inconsiderable  assize  towTi.  Evidence  was  given,  the  ob- 
noxious food  itself  produced  in  com-t,  and  verdict  about 
to  be  pronomiced,  wlien  the  foreman  of  the  jmy  begged 
that  some  of  the  burnt  pig,  of  which  the  culprits  stood 
accused,  might  be  handed  into  the  box.  He  handled  it, 
and  they  all  handled  it ;  and  burning  their  fingers,  as 
Bo-bo  and  his  father  had  done  before  them,  and  nature 
prompting  to  each  of  them  the  same  remedy,  against  the 
face  of  all  the  facts,  and  the  clearest  charge  which  judge 
had  ever  given, — to  the  siu-prLse  of  the  whole  coiu't,  towns- 
folk, strangers,  reporters,  and  all  present — without  leav- 
ing the  box,  or  any  manner  of  consultation  whatever,  they 
brought  in  a  simidtaneous  verdict  of  Not  Guilty. 

The  judge,  who  was  a  shrewd  fellow,  winked  at  the 
manifest  iniquity  of  the  decision  :  and  when  the  com-t 
was  dismissed,  went  pri-sdly  and  bought  up  all  the  pigs 
that  could  be  had  for  love  or  money.  In  a  few  days  his 
lordship's  to-mi-house  was  observed  to  be  on  fire.  The 
thing  took  ■«'ing,  and  now  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen 
but  fires  in  every  direction.  Fuel  and  pigs  grew  enor- 
mously dear  all  over  the  district.  The  insurance-oflices 
one  and  aU  shut  up  shop.  People  built  slighter  and 
slighter  every  day,  imtil  it  was  feared  that  the  very 
science  of  architectm-e  would  in  no  long  time  be  lost  to 


168  THE  ESSAYS  OF   ELIA. 

the  AvorM.  Thus  tliis  custom  of  tiring  houses  continued, 
till  in  process  of  time,  says  my  manuscript,  a  sage  arose, 
like  om-  Locke,  wlio  made  a  discovery  that  the  flesh  of 
swine,  or  indeed  of  any  other  animal,  might  be  cooked 
{burnt,  as  they  called  it)  without  the  necessity  of  con- 
suming a  whole  house  to  dress  it.  Then  first  began  the 
rude  form  of  a  gridiron.  Roasting  by  the  string  or  sjjit 
came  in  a  century  or  two  later,  I  forget  in  whose  dynasty. 
By  such  slow  degrees,  concludes  the  manuscript,  do  the 
most  useful,  and  seemingly  the  most  obvious,  arts  make 
their  way  among  mankind 

Withoiit  placing  too  implicit  faith  in  the  account 
above  given,  it  must  be  agreed  that  if  a  worthy  pretext 
for  so  dangerous  an  experiment  as  setting  houses  on  fire 
(esi^ccially  in  these  days)  could  be  assigned  in  favour  of 
any  culinary  object,  that  pretext  and  excuse  might  be 
found  in  koast  pig. 

Of  all  the  delicacies  in  the  whole  mundiis  edlbilis, 
I  will  maintain  it  to  be  the  most  delicate  — princeps 
obsoniorum. 

I  speak  not  of  yoiu*  grown  porkers — things  between 
pig  and  pork — those  hobbledehoys — but  a  young  and 
tender  suckling — under  a  moon  old — guiltless  as  yet  of 
the  sty — with  no  original  speck  of  the  amor  immunditioi, 
the  hereditary  failing  of  the  first  parent,  yet  manifest — 
his  voice  as  yet  not  broken,  but  sometliing  between  a 
childish  treble  and  a  grumble — the  mild  forerunner  or 
jineludimn  of  a  grunt. 

He  must  be  roasted.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  our 
ancestors  ate  them  seethed,  or  boiled  —  but  wliat  a 
sacrifice  of  the  exterior  tegument ! 

There  is  no  flavour  comparable,  I  will  contend,  to 
that  of  the  crisp,  tawny,  well-watched,  not  over-roasted, 
crackling,  as  it  is  well  called — the  very  teeth  are  invited 
to  their  share  of  the  pleasiu-e  at  this  banquet  in  over- 
coming the  coy,  brittle  resistance  —  with  the  adhesive 
oleaginous — 0  call  it  not  jiit !  but  an  indefinable  sweet- 
TSss~gfowiiigupt(rTt— ^^  tender  blossoming  of  fat — fat 


A  DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST  PIG.  169 

cropped  iu  the  bud — taken  in  the  shoot — in  tlie  iirst 
innocence— the  cream  and  quintessence  of  the  chihl-pig's 
yet  pure  food — the  lean,  no  lean,  but  a  kind  of  animal 
manna — or,  rather,  fat  and  lean  (if  it  must  be  so)  so 
blended  and  running  into  each  other,  that  both  together 
make  but  one  ambrosian  result  or  common  substance. 

Behold  him  while  he  is  "doing" — it  seemeth  rather 
a  refreshing  warmth,  than  a  scorching  heat,  that  he  is  so 
passive  to.  How  equably  he  twirleth  round  the  string  ! 
Now  he  is  just  done.  To  see  the  extreme  sensibility  of 
that  tender  age  !  he  hath  wept  out  his  pretty  eyes — 
radiant  jellies — shooting  stars. — 

See  him  in  the  dish,  his  second  cradle,  how  meek  he 
lieth  ! — wouldst  thou  have  had  this  innocent  grow  up  to 
the  grossness  and  indocility  which  too  often  accompany 
matm-er  swinehood  1  Ten  to  one  he  would  have  proved 
a  glutton,  a  sloven,  an  ol>stinate,  disagreeable  animal — ■ 
wallowing  in  all  manner  of  filthy  conversation — from  these 
sins  he  is  happily  snatched  away — 

Ere  sin  could  blight  or  sorrow  fade, 
Death  came  with  timely  care — 

his  memoiy  is  odoriferous — no  clown  ciu'seth,  while  his 
stomach  half  rejecteth,  the  rank  bacon — no  coalheaver 
bolteth  him  in  reeking  sausages — he  hath  a  fiiir  sepidchre 
iu  the  gratefid  stomach  of  the  judicious  epicm-e — and  for 
such  a  tomb  might  be  content  to  die. 

He  is  the  best  of  sapoi-s.  Pine-apple  is  great.  She 
is  indeed  almost  too  transcendent — a  delight,  if  not  sinfid, 
yet  so  like  to  sinning,  that  really  a  tender- conscienced 
person  would  do  well  to  pause — too  ravishing  for  mortal 
taste,  she  woxmdeth  and  excoriateth  the  lips  that  approach 
her — like  lovers'  kisses,  she  biteth  —  she  is  a  pleasure 
bordering  on  pain  from  the  fierceness  and  insanity  of  her 
relish — but  she  stoppeth  at  the  palate — she  meddleth  not 
^\dth  the  appetite — and  the  coarsest  himger  might  barter 
her  consistently  for  a  mutton-chop. 

Pig — let  me  speak  his  praise — is  no  less  provocative 


170  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

of  the  appetite  than  he  is  satisfactory  to  the  criticaluess 
of  the  censorious  palate.  The  strong  man  may  batten  on 
him,  and  the  weakling  refuseth  not  his  mild  jiuces. 

Unlike  to  mankind's  mixed  characters,  a  bundle  of 
virtues  and  vices,  inexplicably  intertwisted,  and  not  to  be 
unravelled  without  hazard,  he  is — good  throughout.  No 
part  of  him  is  better  or  worse  than  another.  He 
helpeth,  as  far  as  his  little  means  extend,  all  around. 
He  is  the  least  envious  of  banquets.  He  is  all  neigh- 
boui's'  fare. 

I  am  one  of  those  who  freely  and  ungmdgingly  impart 
a  share  of  the  good  things  of  this  life  which  fall  to  their 
lot  (few  as  mine  are  in  this  kind)  to  a  friend.  I  protest 
I  take  as  great  an  interest  in  my  friend's  jileasm-es,  his 
relishes,  and  proper  satisfactions,  as  in  mine  own.  "  Pre- 
sents," I  often  say,  "  endear  Absents."  Hares,  pheasants, 
l^artridges,  snipes,  barn-door  chickens  (those  "tame 
villatic  fowl "),  capons,  plovers,  brawn,  barrels  of  oysters, 
I  dispense  as  freely  as  I  receive  them.  I  love  to  taste 
them,  as  it  were,  upon  the  tongue  of  my  friend.  But  a 
stop  must  be  put  somewhere.  One  woidd  not,  like 
Lear,  "give  everything."  I  make  my  stand  upon  pig. 
Methinks  it  is  an  ingratitude  to  the  Giver  of  all  good 
flavom-s  to  extra-domiciliate,  or  send  out  of  the  house 
slightingly  (under  pretext  of  friendship,  or  I  know  not 
what)  a  blessing  so  particularly  adapted,  predestined,  I 
may  say,  to  my  individual  palate. — It  argues  an  insen- 
sibility. 

I  remember  a  touch  of  conscience  in  this  kind  at 
school.  My  good  old  aunt,  who  never  parted  from  me  at 
the  end  of  a  holiday  without  stuffing  a  sweetmeat,  or 
some  nice  thing,  into  my  pocket,  had  dismissed  me  one 
evening  with  a  smoking  plum-cake,  fresh  from  the  oven. 
In  my  way  to  school  (it  was  over  London  Bridge)  a  grey- 
headed old  beggar  saluted  me  (I  have  no  doubt,  at  this 
time  of  day,  that  he  was  a  counterfeit).  I  had  no  pence  to 
console  him  with,  and  in  the  vanity  of  self-denial,  and  the 
very  coxcombry  of  charity,  school-boy  like,  I  made  him 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.  171 

a  present  of  —  the  whole  cake!  I  walked  on  a  little, 
buoyed  up,  as  one  is  on  such  occasions,  with  a  sweet 
soothing  of  self-satisfaction ;  but,  before  I  had  got  to  the 
end  of  the  bridge,  my  better  feelings  returned,  and  I 
bm-st  into  tears,  thinking  how  ungrateful  I  had  been  to  my 
good  aimt,  to  go  and  give  her  good  gift  away  to  a  stranger 
that  I  had  never  seen  before,  and  who  might  be  a  bad  man 
for  aught  I  knew;  and  then  I  thought  of  the  pleasure  my 
aimt  woidd  be  taking  in  thinking  that  I — I  myself,  and 
not  another — would  eat  her  nice  cake — and  what  shoidd 
I  say  to  her  the  next  time  I  saw  her — how  naughty  I 
was  to  part  with  her  pretty  present ! — and  the  odom-  of 
that  spicy  cake  came  back  upon  my  recollection,  and  the 
pleasure  and  the  curiosity  I  had  taken  in  seeing  her  make 
it,  and  her  joy  when  she  sent  it  to  the  oven,  and  how^  dis- 
appointed she  would  feel  that  I  had  never  had  a  bit  of  it 
in  my  mouth  at  last — and  I  blamed  my  impertinent 
spkit  of  alms-giving,  and  out-of-place  hypocrisy  of  good- 
ness ;  and  above  all  I  wished  never  to  see  the  face 
again  of  that  insidious,  good-for-nothing,  old  grey  im- 
postor. 

Our  ancestore  were  nice  in  their  method  of  sacrificing 
these  tender  victims.  We  read  of  pigs  whipt  to  death 
with  something  of  a  shock,  as  we  hear  of  any  other 
obsolete  custom.  The  age  of  discipline  is  gone  by,  or  it 
would  be  ciu'ious  to  inquire  (in  a  philosophical  light 
merely)  what  effect  this  process  might  have  towards 
intenerating  and  didcifying  a  substance,  naturally  so  mild 
and  dulcet  as  the  flesh  of  young  pigs.  It  looks  hke 
refining  a  violet.  Yet  we  should  be  cautious,  while  we 
condemn  the  inhumanity,  how  we  censm-e  the  wisdom  of 
the  practice.     It  might  impart  a  gusto. — 

I  remember  an  hypothesis,  argued  upon  by  the  yoimg 
students,  when  I  was  at  St.  Omer's,  and  maintained  with 
much  learning  and  pleasantry  on  both  sides,  "  Whether, 
supposing  that  the  flavoiir  of  a  pig  who  obtained  his 
death  by  whipping  (per  Jfa(/eUatio7iem  extremam)  super- 
added a  pleasure  upon  the  palate  of  a  man  more  intense 


172  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

than  uiiy  jjossible  sufrcriii.L;  wc  can  <*oiiccivc  in  the 
animal,  is  man  justified  in  using  that  method  of  putting 
the  animal  to  death  1"     I  forget  the  decision. 

His  sauce  should  be  considered.  Decidedly,  a  few 
bread  crumbs,  done  up  with  his  liver  and  brains,  and  a 
dash  of  mild  sage.  But  banish,  dear  Mrs.  Cook,  I 
beseech  you,  the  whole  onion  tribe.  Barbecue  your 
whole  hogs  to  your  palate,  steeji  them  in  shalots,  stuff 
them  out  with  plantations  of  the  rank  and  guilty  garlic  ; 
you  cannot  poison  them,  or  make  them  stronger  than 
they  arc — but  consider,  he  is  a  weakling— a  flower. 


A  BACHELOR'S  COMPLAINT  OF 
THE  BEHAVIOUE  OF  MARRIED  PEOPLE. 

As  a  single  man,  I  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  my  time  in 
noting  down  the  infirmities  of  Married  People,  to  console 
myself  for  those  superior  pleasiu'es,  wliich  they  tell  me  I 
have  lost  by  remaining  as  I  am. 

I  cannot  say  that  the  quarrels  of  men  and  their  wives 
ever  made  any  great  impression  upon  me,  or  had  much 
tendency  to  strengthen  me  in  those  anti-social  resolutions 
which  I  took  up  long  ago  upon  more  substantial  con- 
siderations. What  oftenest  oftends  me  at  the  houses 
of  married  persons  where  I  visit,  is  an  error  of  quite  a 
different  description ; — it  is  that  they  are  too  loving. 

Not  too  loving  neither :  that  does  not  explain  my 
meaning.  Besides,  why  should  that  offend  me  ?  The 
very  act  of  separating  themselves  from  the  rest  of  the 
world,  to  have  the  fuller  enjoyment  of  each  other's 
society,  implies  that  they  prefer  one  another  to  all  the 
world. 

But  what  I  complain  of  is,  that  they  carry  this  pre- 
ference so  undisguisedly,  they  ])erk  it  up  in  the  fiices  of 
us  single  people  so  shamelessly,  you  cannot  be  in  their 


A  bachelor's  complaint  of  married  people.  173 

company  a  moment  without  being-  made  to  feel,  by  some 
indirect  hint  or  open  avowal,  that  you  are  not  the  object 
of  this  preference.  Now  there  are  some  things  which 
give  no  offence,  while  implied  or  taken  for  granted 
merely;  but  expressed,  there  is  much  offence  in  them.  If 
a  man  were  to  accost  the  first  homely-featured  or  plain- 
dressed  young  woman  of  his  acquaintance,  and  tell  her 
bluntly,  that  she  was  not  handsome  or  rich  enough  for 
liim,  and  he  could  not  marry  her,  he  woidd  deserve  to 
be  kicked  for  his  ill-manners  ;  yet  no  less  is  implied  in 
the  fact,  that  having  access  and  opportimity  of  putting 
the  question  to  her,  he  has  never  yet  thought  fit  to  do  it. 
The  yoimg  woman  understands  this  as  clearly  as  if  it  were 
put  into  words ;  but  no  reasonable  young  woman  would 
think  of  making  this  the  ground  of  a  quarrel.  Just  as 
little  right  have  a  married  couple  to  tell  me  by  speeches, 
and  looks  that  are  scarce  less  plain  than  speeches,  that 
I  am  not  the  happy  man, — the  lady's  choice.  It  is 
enough  that  I  know  I  am  not :  I  do  not  want  this  per- 
petual reminding. 

The  display  of  superior  knowledge  or  riches  may  be 
made  suificiently  mortifying,  but  these  admit  of  a  pallia- 
tive. The  knowledge  which  is  brought  out  to  insidt  me, 
may  accidentally  improve  me ;  and  in  the  rich  man's 
houses  and  pictm-es, — his  parks  and  gardens,  I  have  a 
temporary  usufruct  at  least.  But  the  display  of  married 
happiness  has  none  of  these  palliatives  :  it  is  throughout 
pure,  uurecompensed,  unqualified  insidt. 

Marriage  by  its  best  title  is  a  monopoly,  and  not  of 
the  least  invidious  sort.  It  is  the  cunning  of  most 
possessors  of  any  exclusive  privilege  to  keep  their  ad- 
vantage as  much  out  of  sight  as  possible,  that  their  less 
favoiu'ed  neighboiu's,  seeing  little  of  the  benefit,  may  the 
less  be  disposed  to  question  the  right.  But  these  married 
monopolists  thmst  the  most  obnoxious  part  of  their 
patent  into  our  faces. 

Nothing  is  to  me  more  distasteful  than  that  entire  com- 
placency and  satisfaction  which  beam  in  the  countenances 


174  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

of  a  new-married  couple, — in  that  of  the  lady  particu- 
larly :  it  tells  you,  that  her  lot  is  disposed  of  in  this 
world :  that  you  can  have  no  hopes  of  her.  It  is  true,  I 
have  none  :  nor  wishes  either,  perhaps  :  but  this  is  one  of 
those  truths  which  ought,  as  I  said  before,  to  be  taken 
for  granted,  not  expressed. 

The  excessive  airs  which  those  people  give  themselves, 
founded  on  the  ignorance  of  us  unmarried  people,  would 
be  more  oifensive  if  they  were  less  irrational.  We  will 
allow  them  to  understand  the  mysteries  belonging  to  their 
own  craft  better  than  we,  who  have  not  had  the  happiness 
to  be  made  free  of  the  company :  but  their  arrogance  is 
not  content  within  these  limits.  If  a  single  person  pre- 
sume to  otfer  his  opinion  in  their  presence,  though  upon 
the  most  indifferent  subject,  he  is  immediately  silenced  as 
an  incompetent  person.  Nay,  a  yoimg  married  lady  of 
my  acquaintance,  who,  the  best  of  the  jest  was,  had  not 
changed  her  condition  above  a  fortnight  before,  in  a 
question  on  which  I  had  the  misfortune  to  differ  from 
her,  respecting  the  properest  mode  of  breeding  oysters  for 
the  London  market,  had  the  assurance  to  ask  with  a 
sneer,  how  such  an  old  Bachelor  as  I  could  pretend  to 
know  anything  about  such  matters  ! 

But  what  I  have  spoken  of  hitherto  is  nothing  to  the 
airs  which  these  creatm-es  give  themselves  when  they 
come,  as  they  generally  do,  to  have  children.  When  I 
consider  how  little  of  a  rarity  children  are, — that  every 
street  and  blind  alley  swarms  wdth  them, — that  the 
poorest  people  commonly  have  them  in  most  abundance, 
— that  there  are  few  marriages  that  are  not  blest  with  at 
least  one  of  these  bargains, — how  often  they  tm-n  out  ill, 
and  defeat  the  fond  hopes  of  their  parents,  taking  to 
vicious  courses,  which  end  in  poverty,  disgrace,  the 
gallows,  etc. — I  cannot  for  my  life  tell  what  cause  for 
pride  there  can  possibly  be  in  having  them.  If  they 
were  young  phoenixes,  indeed,  that  were  born  but  one  in 
a  year,  there  might  be  a  pretext.  But  wlien  they  are  so 
common 


A  bachelor's  complaint  of  married  people.  175 

I  do  not  advert  to  the  insolent  merit  which  they 
assume  with  theii-  liusljands  on  these  occasions.  Let 
thevi  look  to  that.  But  why  rue,  who  are  not  their 
natural-born  subjects,  should  be  expected  to  bring  our 
spices,  myrrh,  and  incense, — our  tribute  and  homage  of 
admiration, — I  do  not  see. 

"  Like  as  the  arrows  in  the  hand  of  the  giant,  even  so 
are  the  young  children ;"  so  says  the  excellent  office  in 
our  Prayer-book  appointed  for  the  chiu-ching  of  women. 
"  Happy  is  the  man  that  hath  his  quiver  full  of  them." 
So  say  I ;  but  then  don't  let  him  discharge  his  quiver 
upon  us  that  are  weaponless ; — let  them  be  arrows,  but 
not  to  gall  and  stick  us.  I  have  generally  observed  that 
these  arrows  are  double-headed :  they  have  two  forks,  to 
be  sm-e  to  hit  "with  one  or  the  other.  As  for  instance, 
where  you  come  into  a  house  which  is  full  of  children,  if 
you  happen  to  take  no  notice  of  them  (you  are  thinking 
of  something  else,  perhaps,  and  tiu'n  a  deaf  ear  to  their 
innocent  caresses),  you  are  set  down  as  imtractable, 
morose,  a  hater  of  children.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you 
find  them  more  than  usually  engaging, — if  you  are  taken 
with  their  pretty  manners,  and  set  about  in  earnest  to 
romp  and  play  with  them, — some  pretext  or  other  is  sure 
to  be  found  for  sending  them  out  of  the  room  ;  they  are 

too  noisy  or  boisterous,  or  Mr. does  not  like  children. 

With  one  or  other  of  these  forks  the  arrow  is  sure  to  hit 
you. 

I  could  forgive  their  jealousy,  and  dispense  with  toying 
with  their  brats,  if  it  gives  them  any  pain ;  but  I  think 
it  uiureasonable  to  be  called  upon  to  love  them,  where  I 
see  no  occasion, — to  love  a  whole  family,  perhaps  eight, 
nine,  or  ten,  indiscriminately, — to  love  all  the  pretty 
dears,  because  children  are  so  engaging  ! 

I  know  there  is  a  proverb,  "  Love  me,  love  my  dog  : " 
that  is  not  always  so  very  practicable,  particularly  if  the 
dog  be  set  upon  you  to  tease  you  or  snap  at  you  in  sport. 
But  a  dog,  or  a  lesser  thing — any  inanimate  substance,  as 
a  keepsake,  a  watch  or  a  ring,  a  tree,  or  the  place  where 


176  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

we  last  parted  when  my  friend  went  away  upon  a  long 
absence,  I  can  make  shift  to  love,  because  I  love  liim, 
and  anything  that  reminds  me  of  him ;  provided  it  be  in 
its  nature  indifferent,  and  apt  to  receive  whatever  hue 
fancy  can  give  it.  But  children  have  a  real  character, 
and  an  essential  being  of  themselves :  they  are  amiable 
or  unamiable  per  se  ;  I  must  love  or  hate  them  as  I  see 
cause  for  either  in  their  qualities.  A  child's  nature  is  too 
serious  a  thing  to  admit  of  its  being  regarded  as  a  mere 
appendage  to  another  being,  and  to  be  loved  or  hated 
accordingly ;  they  stand  with  me  upon  their  own  stock, 
as  much  as  men  and  women  do.  Oh  !  but  you  will  say, 
sm-e  it  is  an  attractive  age, — there  is  something  in  the 
tender  years  of  infancy  that  of  itself  charms  us  1  That  is 
the  very  reason  why  I  am  more  nice  about  them.  I 
know  that  a  sweet  child  is  the  sweetest  thing  in  nature, 
not  even  excepting  the  delicate  creatures  which  bear  them ; 
but  the  prettier  the  kind  of  a  thing  is,  the  more  desirable 
it  is  that  it  should  be  pretty  of  its  kind.  One  daisy 
differs  not  much  from  another  in  glory;  but  a  violet 
should  look  and  smell  the  daintiest. — I  was  always  rather 
squeamish  in  my  women  and  children. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst :  one  must  be  admitted  into 
their  familiarity  at  least,  before  they  can  complain  of 
inattention.  It  implies  visits,  and  some  kind  of  inter- 
course. But  if  the  husband  be  a  man  with  whom  you 
have  lived  on  a  friendly  footing  before  marriage — if  you 
did  not  come  in  on  the  wife's  side — if  you  did  not  sneak 
into  the  house  in  her  train,  but  were  an  old  friend  in  fiist 
habits  of  intimacy  before  their  courtship  was  so  much  as 
thought  on, — look  about  you — your  tenure  is  precarious 
— before  a  twelvemonth  shall  roll  over  yoiu-  head,  you 
shall  find  yoiu-  old  friend  gradually  grow  cool  and  altered 
towards  you,  and  at  last  seek  opportunities  of  breaking 
with  you.  I  have  scarce  a  married  friend  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, upon  whose  firm  faith  I  can  rely,  whose  friendship 
did  not  commence  after  the  period  of  his  marriage. 
With  some  limitations,  they  can  endiu-e  that ;  but  that 


A  bachelor's  complaint  of  jmrried  people.   17  7 

the  good  man  should  have  dared  to  enter  into  a  solemn 
league  of  friendshii^  in  which  they  were  not  consulted, 
thoxigh  it  happened  before  they  knew  him, — before  they 
that  are  now  man  and  wife  ever  met, — this  is  intolerable 
to  them.  Every  long  friendship,  every  old  authentic 
intimacy,  must  be  brought  into  their  office  to  be  new 
stamped  with  their  currency,  as  a  sovereign  prince  calls 
in  the  good  old  money  that  was  coined  in  some  reign 
before  he  was  born  or  thought  of,  to  be  new  marked  and 
minted  with  the  stamp  of  his  authority,  before  he  will  let 
it  pass  current  in  the  world.  You  may  guess  what  luck 
generally  befalls  such  a  rusty  piece  of  metal  as  I  am  in 
these  new  Tnintings. 

Innumerable  are  the  ways  which  they  take  to  insidt 
and  worm  you  out  of  their  husband's  confidence.  Laugh- 
ing at  all  you  say  ■with  a  kind  of  wonder,  as  if  you  were 
a  queer  kind  of  fellow  that  said  good  things,  hut  an  oddity, 
is  one  of  the  ways  ; — they  have  a  particular  kind  of  stare 
for  the  purpose ; — till  at  last  the  husband,  who  used  to 
defer  to  yoiu*  judgment,  and  woidd  pass  over  some  ex- 
crescences of  understanding  and  manner  for  the  sake  of  a 
general  vein  of  observation  (not  c{uite  \adgar)  which  he 
perceived  in  you,  begins  to  suspect  whether  you  are  not 
altogether  a  humorist, — a  fellow  well  enough  to  have 
consorted  with  in  his  bachelor  days,  but  not  quite  so 
proper  to  be  introduced  to  ladies.  This  may  be  called 
the  staring  way ;  and  is  that  which  has  oftenest  been  put 
in  practice  against  me. 

Then  there  is  the  exaggerating  way,  or  the  M'ay  of 
irony ;  that  is,  where  they  find  you  an  object  of  especial 
regard  with  their  husband,  who  is  not  so  easily  to  be 
shaken  from  the  lasting  attachment  founded  on  esteem 
which  he  has  conceived  towards  you,  by  never  qualified 
exaggerations  to  cry  up  all  that  you  say  or  do,  till  the 
good  man,  who  understands  well  enougli  that  it  is  all 
done  in  compliment  to  him,  grows  weary  of  the  debt  of 
gratitude  which  is  due  to  so  much  candour,  and  by  relaxing 
a  little  on  his  part,  and  taking  down  a  peg  or  two  in  his 

N 


178  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

enthusiasm,  sinks  at  length  to  the  kindly  level  of  moderate 
esteem — that  "  decent  attection  and  complacent  kindness  " 
towards  yon,  where  she  herself  can  join  in  sympathy  with 
him  without  much  stretch  and  violence  to  her  sincerity. 

Another  way  (for  the  ways  they  have  to  accomplish  so 
desirable  a  purjiose  are  infinite)  is,  witli  a  kind  of  innocent 
simplicity,  continually  to  mistake  what  it  was  which  first 
made  their  husband  fond  of  yoir.  If  an  esteem  for  some- 
thing excellent  in  your  moral  character  was  that  which 
riveted  the  chain  which  she  is  to  break,  upon  any  ima- 
ginary discovery  of  a  want  of  poignancy  in  yoiu-  conversa- 
tion, she  wiU  cry,  "  I  thought,  my  dear,  you  described 

your  friend,  Mr. ,  as  a  great  wit?"     If,  on  the 

other  hand,  it  was  for  some  supposed  charm  in  your  con- 
versation that  he  first  grew  to  like  you,  and  was  content 
for  this  to  overlook  some  trifling  irregularities  in  yoiu* 
moral  deportment,  upon  the  first  notice  of  any  of  these 
she  as  readily  exclaims,  "  This,  my  dear,  is  your  good 

Mr. !"     One  good  lady  whom  I  took  the  liberty 

of  expostulating  with  for  not  showing  me  quite  so  much 
respect  as  I  thought  due  to  her  husband's  old  friend,  had 
the  candour  to  confess  to  me  that  she  had  often  heard 

Mr. speak  of  me  before  marriage,  and  that  she 

had  conceived  a  great  desire  to  be  acquainted  with  me, 
but  that  the  sight  of  me  had  very  much  disappointed  her 
expectations ;  for,  from  her  husband's  representations  of 
me,  she  had  formed  a  notion  that  she  was  to  see  a  fine, 
tall,  officer-like  looking  man  (I  use  her  very  words),  the 
very  reverse  of  which  proved  to  be  the  truth.  This  was 
candid ;  and  I  had  the  civility  not  to  ask  her  in  return, 
how  she  came  to  pitch  upon  a  standard  of  personal  accom- 
plishments for  her  husband's  friends  which  dift'ered  so 
much  from  his  own ;  for  my  friend's  dimensions  as  near 
as  possible  approximate  to  mine ;  he  standing  five  feet 
five  in  his  shoes,  in  which  I  have  the  advantage  of  him 
by  about  half  an  inch  ;  and  he  no  more  than  myself  ex- 
hibiting any  indications  of  a  martial  character  in  his  air 
or  countenance. 


A  bachelor's  COMrLAINT  OF  MARRIED  PEOPLE.    179 

These  are  some  of  the  mortifications  -whif-h  I  have 
encountered  in  the  absmxl  attemjit  to  visit  at  their  houses. 
To  enimierate  them  all  would  be  a  vain  endeavoiu" ;  I 
shaU  therefore  just  glance  at  the  very  common  impro- 
priety of  which  married  ladies  are  guilty, — of  treating  us 
as  if  we  were  their  husbands,  and  vice  veisd.  I  mean, 
when  they  use  us  with  fomiliarity,  and  their  husbands 
with  ceremony.  Testacea,  for  instance,  kept  me  the 
other  night  two  or  three  hom's  beyond  my  usual  time  of 

supping,  while  she  was  fretting  because  Mr. did 

not  come  home,  till  the  oysters  were  all  spoiled,  rather 
than  she  would  be  guilty  of  the  impoliteness  of  touching 
one  in  his  absence.  This  was  reversing  the  point  of  good 
manners :  for  ceremony  is  an  invention  to  take  off  the 
uneasy  feeling  which  we  derive  from  knowing  oui'selves 
to  be  less  the  olvject  of  love  and  esteem  with  a  fellow- 
creature  than  some  other  person  is.  It  endeavoiu's  to 
make  up,  by  superior  attentions  in  little  points,  for  that 
invidious  preference  which  it  is  forced  to  deny  in  the 
gi'eater.  Had  Testacea  kept  the  oysters  back  for  me, 
and  withstood  her  husband's  importunities  to  go  to 
sujjper,  she  woidd  have  acted  according  to  the  strict 
rules  of  propriety.  I  know  no  ceremony  that  ladies  are 
bound  to  observe  to  their  husbands,  beyond  the  point  of 
a  modest  beha^dour  and  deconmi :  therefore  I  must  pro- 
test against  the  vicarious  gluttony  of  Cerasia,  who  at  her 
own  table  sent  away  a  dish  of  Morellas,  which  I  was 
applying  to  with  great  good-will,  to  her  husband  at  the 
other  end  of  the  table,  and  recommended  a  plate  of  less 
extraordinary  gooseberries  to  my  unwedded  palate  in  their 
stead.     Neither  can  I  excuse  the  wanton  affront  of 

But  I  am  weary  of  stringing  up  all  my  married 
acquaintance  by  Roman  denominations.  Let  them  amend 
and  change  their  manners,  or  I  promise  to  record  the 
full-length  English  of  their  names,  to  the  terror  of  all 
such  desperate  offenders  in  future. 


180  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS. 

The  casual  sight  of  an  old  Play  Bill,  which  I  picked  up 
the  other  day — I  know  not  by  what  chance  it  was  pre- 
served so  long — tempts  me  to  call  to  mind  a  few  of  the 
Players,  who  make  the  principal  figure  in  it.  It  presents 
the  cast  of  parts  in  the  Twelfth-Night,  at  the  old  Driuy- 
lane  Theatre  two-and-thirty  years  ago.  There  is  something 
very  toucliing  in  these  old  remembrances.  They  make  ils 
think  liow  we  once  used  to  read  a  Play  Bill — not,  as  now 
perad venture,  singling  out  a  favovuite  performer,  and  cast- 
ing a  negligent  eye  over  the  rest ;  but  spelling  out  every 
name,  down  to  the  very  mutes  and  servants  of  the  scene  ; 
when  it  was  a  matter  of  no  small  moment  to  us  whether 
Whitfield,  or  Packer,  took  the  part  of  Fabian ;  when 
Benson,  and  Bm-ton,  and  Phillimore — names  of  small 
account — had  an  importance,  beyond  what  we  can  be  con- 
tent to  attribute  now  to  the  time's  best  actors. — "  Orsino, 
by  Mr.  Barrymore." — What  a  full  Shakspearian  soiuid  it 
carries !  how  fresh  to  memory  arise  the  image  and  the 
manner  of  the  gentle  actor  !  Those  who  have  only  seen 
Mrs.  Jordan  within  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  can  have 
no  adequate  notion  of  her  performance  of  such  parts  as 
Ophelia ;  Helena,  in  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well ;  and 
Viola,  in  this  play.  Her  voice  had  latterly  acquired  a 
coarseness,  which  suited  well  enough  with  her  Nells  and 
Hoydens,  but  in  those  days  it  sank,  with  her  steady, 
melting  eye,  into  the  heart.  Her  joyous  parts — in  which 
her  memory  now  chiefly  lives — in  her  youth  were  outdone 
by  her  plaintive  ones.  There  is  no  givnng  an  account  how 
she  delivered  the  disguised  story  of  her  love  for  Orsino. 
It  was  no  set  speech,  tliat  she  had  foreseen,  so  as  to  weave 
it  into  an  harmonious  period,  line  necessarily  following 
line,  to  make  up  tlie  music — yet  I  have  heard  it  so  spoken, 
or  rather  read,  not  without  its  grace  and  beauty — but, 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.        181 

when  she  had  declared  her  sister's  history  to  be  a  "  blank," 
and  that  shd»"  never  told  her  love,"  there  was  a  pause,  as 
if  the  stoiy  had  ended — and  then  the  image  of  the  "  worm 
in  the  bud"  came  up  as  a  new  suggestion — and  the 
heightened  image  of  "  Patience  "  stiU  followed  after  that 
as  by  some  growing  (and  not  mechanical)  process,  thought 
springing  up  after  thought,  I  would  almost  say,  as  they 
were  watered  by  her  tears.     So  in  those  fine  lines — 

Write  loyal  cantons  of  contemned  love — 
Halloo  your  name  to  the  reverberate  hills — 

there  was  no  preparation  made  in  tlie  foregoing  image  for 
that  which  was  to  follow.  She  used  no  rhetoric  in  her 
passion ;  or  it  was  natm-e's  own  rhetoric,  most  legitimate 
then,  when  it  seemed  altogether  without  nde  or  law. 

Mrs.  Powel  (now  Mi-s.  Pienard),  then  in  the  pride  of 
her  beauty,  made  an  admirable  01i\'ia.  She  was  par- 
ticularly excellent  in  her  imbending  scenes  in  conversation 
with  the  Clown.  I  have  seen  some  Olivias — and  those 
very  sensible  actresses  too — who  in  these  interlocutions 
have  seemed  to  set  their  wits  at  the  jester,  and  to  vie 
conceits  with  him  in  dowm-ight  emulation.  IJut  she  used 
him  for  her  sport,  like  what  he  was,  to  trifle  a  leisiu'e 
sentence  or  two  with,  and  then  to  be  dismissed,  and  she 
to  be  the  Great  Lady  still.  She  touched  the  imperious 
fantastic  humour  of  the  character  with  nicety.  Her  fine 
spacious  person  filled  the  scene. 

The  part  of  Malvolio  has,  in  my  judgment,  been  so 
often  misunderstood,  and  the  general  merits  of  the  actor, 
who  then  played  it,  so  imduly  appreciated,  that  I  shall 
hope  for  pardon,  if  I  am  a  little  prolix  upon  these 
points. 

Of  all  the  actors  who  flourished  in  my  time — a  melan- 
choly phrase  if  taken  aright,  reader — Bensley  had  most  of 
the  swell  of  soid,  was  greatest  in  the  deliveiy  of  heroic 
conceptions,  the  emotions  consequent  upon  the  present- 
ment of  a  great  idea  to  the  fancy.  He  had  the  true 
poetical  enthusiasm — the  rarest  facility  among  players. 


182  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

None  that  I  remember  possessed  even  a  portion  of  that 
fine  madness  which  he  tlirew  out  in  Hotspm-'s  flimous 
rant  a])out  glory,  or  the  transports  of  the  Venetian  in- 
cendiary at  the  vision  of  the  fired  city.  His  voice  liad 
the  dissonance,  and  at  times  th(!  insjnriting  efiect,  of  the 
trumpet.  His  gait  Avas  uncouth  and  stift',  but  no  way 
embarrassed  by  affectation  ;  and  the  thorough-bred  gentle- 
man was  uppermost  in  every  movement.  He  seized  the 
moment  of  passion  with  greatest  truth ;  like  a  faitliful 
clock,  never  striking  before  the  time ;  never  anticipating 
or  leading  you  to  anticipate.  He  was  totally  destitute  of 
trick  and  artifice.  He  seemed  come  upon  the  stage  to  do 
the  poet's  message  simply,  and  he  did  it  with  as  genuine 
fidelity  as  the  nuncios  in  Homer  deliver  the  errands  of  the 
gods.  He  let  tlie  passion  or  the  sentiment  do  its  own 
work  without  prop  or  bolstering.  He  woidd  have  scorned 
to  mountebank  it ;  and  betrayed  none  of  that  cleverness 
whicli  is  the  bane  of  serious  acting.  For  this  reason,  his 
lago  was  the  only  endurable  one  which  I  rememlier  to 
have  seen.  No  spectator,  from  liis  action,  coidd  divine 
more  of  his  artifice  than  Othello  was  supposed  to  do. 
His  confessions  in  soliloquy  alone  put  you  in  possession  of 
the  mystery.  There  were  no  by-intimations  to  make  the 
audience  fancy  their  own  discernment  so  much  greater 
than  that  of  tlie  Moor — who  commonly  stands  like  a  great 
helpless  mark,  set  up  for  mine  Ancient,  and  a  quantity  of 
barren  spectators,  to  shoot  their  bolts  at.  The  lago  of 
Bensley  did  not  go  to  work  so  grossly.  There  was  a  trium- 
phant tone  about  the  character,  natural  to  a  general  con- 
sciousness of  power ;  but  none  of  that  petty  vanity  which 
cluickles  and  cannot  contain  itself  upon  any  little  success- 
ful stroke  of  its  knavery — as  is  common  \Wth  yoiu-  small 
villains,  and  green  probationers  in  mischief.  It  did  not 
clap  or  crow  before  its  time.  It  was  not  a  man  setting 
his  wits  at  a  child,  and  Avinking  all  the  while  at  other 
children,  who  ai'e  mightily  pleased  at  being  let  into  the 
secret ;  but  a  consummate  villain  entrapping  a  noble 
nature  into  toils  against  which  no  discernment  was  avail- 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.       183 

able,  where  the  manner  was  as  fathomless  as  the  piirpose 
seemed  dark,  and  mthout  motive.  The  part  of  Malvolio, 
in  the  Twelfth  Night,  was  performed  by  Beusley  with  a 
richness  and  a  dignity,  of  which  (to  judge  from  some  re- 
cent castings  of  that  character)  the  very  tradition  miLst  be 
worn  out  from  tlie  stage.  No  manager  in  those  days  would 
have  dreamed  of  gi^dng  it  to  Mr.  Baddely,  or  Mr.  Parsons  ; 
when  Bensley  was  occasionally  absent  from  the  theatre, 
John  Kemble  thought  it  no  derogation  to  succeed  to  the 
part.  Malvolio  is  not  essentially  ludicrous.  He  becomes 
comic  but  by  accident.  He  is  cold,  austere,  repelling  ;  but 
dignified,  consistent,  and,  for  what  appears,  rather  of  an 
over-stretched  morality.  Maria  describes  him  as  a  sort  of 
Puritan ;  and  he  might  have  worn  his  gold  chain  with 
honour  in  one  of  our  old  roundhead  families,  in  the  service 
of  a  Lambert,  or  a  Lady  Fairfiix.  But  his  morality  and 
his  manners  are  misplaced  in  Illyria.  He  is  opposed  to 
the  proper  levities  of  the  piece,  and  falls  in  the  unequal 
contest.  Still  his  pride,  or  his  gravity  (call  it  which  you 
wiU),  is  inherent,  and  native  to  the  man,  not  mock  or 
aifected,  which  latter  only  are  the  fit  objects  to  excite 
laughter.  His  quality  is  at  the  best  imlovely,  but 
neither  buftbon  nor  contemptible.  His  bearing  is  lofty, 
a  little  above  his  station,  but  probably  not  much  above 
his  deserts.  We  see  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have 
been  brave,  honourable,  accomplished.  His  careless  com- 
mittal of  the  ring  to  the  ground  (which  he  was  com- 
missioned to  restore  to  Cesario),  bespeaks  a  generosity  of 
birth  and  feeling.  His  dialect  on  all  occasions  is  that  of 
a  gentleman  and  a  man  of  education.  We  must  not  con- 
found him  with  the  eternal  old,  low  steward  of  comedy. 
He  is  master  of  the  household  to  a  great  princess ;  a 
dignity  probably  conferred  upon  him  for  other  respects 
than  age  or  length  of  service.  Olivia,  at  the  first  indica- 
tion of  his  supposed  madness,  declares  that  she  "woidd 
not  have  him  miscarry  for  half  of  her  dowry."  Does  this 
look  as  if  the  character  was  meant  to  appear  little  or  in- 
significant '{     Once,  indeed,  she  accuses  him  to  his  face — 


18-4  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

of  what? — of  being  "sick  of  self-love," — but  with  a 
gentleness  and  considerateuess,  which  coidd  not  have  been, 
if  she  had  not  thought  that  this  particular  infii-mity 
shaded  some  virtues.  His  rebuke  to  the  knight  and  his 
sottish  revellers,  is  sensible  and  spirited ;  and  when  we 
take  into  consideration  the  unprotected  condition  of  liis 
mistress,  and  the  strict  regard  with  which  her  state  of 
real  or  dissembled  mourning  would  draw  the  eyes  of  the 
world  upon  her  house-atfairs,  Malvolio  might  feel  the 
honour  of  the  ftimily  in  some  sort  in  his  keeping ;  as  it 
appears  not  that  Olivia  had  any  more  brothers,  or  kins- 
men, to  look  to  it — for  Sir  Toby  had  dropped  all  such 
nice  respects  at  the  buttery-hatch.  That  Malvolio  was 
meant  to  be  represented  as  i)ossessing  estimable  qualities, 
the  expression  of  the  Duke,  in  his  anxiety  to  have  him 
reconciled,  almost  infers  :  "  Pursue  him,  and  entreat  him 
to  a  peace."  Even  in  his  abused  state  of  chains  and  dark- 
ness, a  sort  of  greatness  seems  never  to  desert  him.  He 
argues  highly  and  well  with  the  supposed  Sir  Topas,  and 
philosojihizes  gallantly  upon  his  straw. ^  There  must  have 
been  some  shadow  of  worth  about  the  man  ;  he  must  have 
been  something  more  than  a  mere  vapour — a  thing  of 
straw,  or  Jack  in  office — before  Fabian  and  Maria  could 
have  ventured  sending  him  upon  a  courting -errand  to 
Olivia.  There  was  some  consonancy  (as  he  woidd  say)  in 
the  undertaking,  or  the  jest  would  have  been  too  bold 
even  for  that  house  of  misrule. 

Bensley,  accordingly,  threw  over  the  jiart  an  air  of 
Spanish  loftiness.  He  looked,  spake,  and  moved  like  an 
old  Castilian.  He  was  starch,  spruce,  opinionated,  but 
his  superstructiire  of  pride  seemed  bottomed  upon  a  sense 
of  worth.     There  was  something  in  it  beyond  the  cox- 

^  Cloivn.   What  is  the  opiniou  of  Pytliagoras  coiiceriiiiig  wild 
fowl  ? 
3fal.   Tliat  the  soul  of  our  grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a  bird. 
Clown.  What  thinkest  thou  of  his  opinion  ? 
Mai.   I  think  nobly  of  the  soul,  and  no  way  approve  of  liis 
opinion. 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.        185 

comb.  It  was  big  and  swelling,  but  you  could  not  be 
sure  that  it  was  hollow.  You  might  wish  to  see  it  taken 
down,  but  you  felt  that  it  was  upon  an  elevation.  He 
was  magnificent  from  the  outset ;  but  when  the  decent 
sobrieties  of  the  character  began  to  give  way,  and  the 
poison  of  self-love,  in  his  conceit  of  the  Coimtess's  affec- 
tion, gradually  to  work,  you  would  have  thought  that  the 
hero  of  La  ]\Ianeha  in  person  stood  before  you.  How  he 
went  smiling  to  himself  !  mth  what  ineftable  carelessness 
woidd  he  twirl  liis  gold  chain  !  what  a  dream  it  was  !  you 
were  infected  with  tlie  ilhision,  and  did  not  wish  that  it 
should  be  removed  !  you  had  no  room  for  laughter  !  if  an 
imseasonable  reflection  of  morality  obtnided  itself,  it  was 
a  deep  sense  of  the  pitiable  infirmity  of  man's  nature, 
that  can  lay  him  open  to  such  frenzies— but,  in  truth, 
you  rather  admired  than  pitied  the  lunacy  while  it  lasted 
— you  felt  that  an  hour  of  such  mistake  was  worth  an 
age  with  the  eyes  open.  Who  would  not  wish  to  live  but 
for  a  day  in  the  conceit  of  such  a  lady's  love  as  01i\'ia  ? 
Why,  the  Duke  woidd  have  given  his  principality  but  for 
a  quarter  of  a  minute,  sleeping  or  waking,  to  liave  been 
so  deluded.  The  man  seemed  to  tread  upon  air,  to  taste 
manna,  to  walk  with  his  head  in  the  clouds,  to  mate 
Hyperion.  0  !  shake  not  the  castles  of  his  pride — endure 
yet  for  a  season,  bright  moments  of  confidence — "  stand 
still,  ye  watches  of  the  element,"  that  Malvolio  may  be 
stiU  in  fancy  fair  Olivia's  lord  ! — but  fate  and  retribution 
say  no — I  hear  the  mischievous  titter  of  Maria — the  witty 
taunts  of  Sir  Toby — the  still  more  insupportable  trimnph 
of  the  foolish  knight — the  counterfeit  Sir  Topas  is  un- 
masked— and  "  thus  the  whirligig  of  time,"  as  the  true 
clown  hath  it,  "  brings  in  his  revenges."  I  confess  that 
I  never  saw  the  catastrophe  of  this  character,  while 
Bensley  played  it,  without  a  kind  of  tragic  interest. 
There  was  good  foolery  too.  Few  now  remember  Dodd. 
What  an  Aguecheek  the  stage  lost  in  him !  Love- 
grove,  who  came  nearest  to  the  old  actors,  re^^ved  the 
character  some  few  seasons  ago,  and  made  it  sufficiently 


186  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

grotesque ;  but  Dodd  was  it,  as  it  came  out  of  nature's 
hands.  It  miglit  be  said  to  remain  in  jmris  naturalihis. 
In  exjiressing  slowness  of  apprehension,  tliis  actor  siu'- 
l^assed  all  others.  You  could  see  the  first  dawn  of  an 
idea  stealing  slowly  over  his  coimtenance,  climbing  up  by 
little  and  little,  with  a  painful  process,  till  it  cleared  \ip 
at  last  to  tlie  fulness  of  a  twilight  conception — its  highest 
meridian.  He  seemed  to  keep  back  his  intellect,  as  some 
have  had  the  power  to  retard  their  pulsation.  The 
balloon  takes  less  time  in  filling  than  it  took  to  cover  the 
expansion  of  his  broad  moony  face  over  all  its  quarters 
with  expression.  A  glimmer  of  understanding  would 
appear  in  a  corner  of  his  eye,  and  for  lack  of  fuel  go 
out  again.  A  part  of  his  forehead  would  catch  a  little 
intelligence,  and  be  a  long  time  in  communicating  it  to 
the  remainder. 

I  am  ill  at  dates,  but  I  think  it  is  now  better  than 
five-and-twenty  years  ago,  that  walking  in  the  gardens  of 
Gray's  Inn — they  were  then  far  finer  than  they  are  now — 
the  accursed  Verulam  Buildings  had  not  encroached  upon 
all  the  east  side  of  them,  cutting  out  delicate  gi-een 
craukles,  and  shouldering  away  one  or  two  of  the  stately 
alcoves  of  the  terrace — the  survivor  stands  gaping  and 
relationless  as  if  it  remembered  its  brother — they  are  still 
the  best  gardens  of  any  of  the  Inns  of  Com-t,  my  beloved 
Temple  not  forgotten — have  the  gravest  character ;  their 
aspect  being  altogether  reverend  and  law -breathing — • 
Bacon  has  left  the  impress  of  his  foot  upon  their  gravel 

walks taking  my  afternoon  solace  on  a  summer  day 

upon  the  aforesaid  terrace,  a  comely  sad  personage  came 
towards  me,  whom,  from  his  grave  air  and  deportment,  I 
judged  to  be  one  of  the  old  Benchers  of  the  Inn.  He 
had  a  serious,  thoughtful  forehead,  and  seemed  to  be  in 
meditations  of  mortality.  As  I  have  an  instinctive  awe 
of  old  Benchers,  I  was  passing  him  with  that  sort  of  sub- 
indicative  token  of  respect  which  one  is  apt  to  demon- 
strate towards  a  venerable  stranger,  and  which  rather 
denotes  an  inclination  to  greet  him,   than  any  positive 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  187 

motion  of  the  body  to  that  effect — a  species  of  humility 
and  ■v^ill-^yorship  which  I  observe,  nine  times  out  of  ten, 
rather  puzzles  than  pleases  the  person  it  is  offered  to — 
when  the  face  timiiug  full  upon  me  strangely  identified 
itself  vriih  that  of  Dodd.  Upon  close  inspection  I  was  not 
mistaken.  But  could  this  sad  thoughtful  countenance  be 
the  same  vacant  face  of  foUy  which  I  had  hailed  so  often 
imder  cii-cvuustances  of  gaiety ;  which  I  had  never  seen 
without  a  smile,  or  recognised  l)ut  as  the  usher  of  mirth ; 
that  looked  out  so  formally  flat  iu  Foppingtou,  S(j  frothily 
pert  in  Tattle,  so  impotently  IjiLsy  in  Backbite  ;  so  blankly 
divested  of  all  meaning,  or  resolutely  expressive  of  none, 
in  Acres,  in  Fribble,  and  a  thousand  agreeable  imper- 
tinences 1  Was  tliis  the  face — full  of  thought  and  care- 
fulness— that  had  so  often  divested  itself  at  will  of  every 
trace  of  either  to  give  me  diversion,  to  clear  my  cloudy 
face  for  two  or  three  hours  at  least  of  its  fiuTOWs  !  Was 
tMs  the  face — manly,  sober,  intelligent — ^which  I  had  so 
often  despised,  made  mocks  at,  made  meriy  with  !  The 
remembrance  of  the  freedoms  which  I  had  taken  with  it 
came  upon  me  -SAdth  a  reproach  of  insult.  I  could  have 
asked  it  pardon.  I  thought  it  looked  upon  me  with  a 
sense  of  injury.  There  is  something  strauge  as  well  as 
sad  in  seeing  actors — yoiu-  pleasant  fellows  particularly — 
subjected  to  and  sufiering  the  common  lot ; — theii"  for- 
times,  their  casualties,  thek  deaths,  seem  to  belong  to  the 
scene,,  their  actions  to  be  amenable  to  poetic  justice  only. 
We  can  hardly  connect  them  with  more  awfiil  responsi- 
bilities. The  death  of  this  fine  actor  took  place  shortly 
after  this  meeting.  He  had  quitted  the  stage  some 
months ;  and,  as  I  learned  afterwards,  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  resorting  daily  to  these  gardens,  almost  to  the 
day  of  his  decease.  In  these  serious  walks,  probably,  he 
was  divesting  himself  of  many  scenic  and  some  real 
vanities — weaning  himself  from  the  frivolities  of  the  lesser 
and  the  greater  theatre — doing  gentle  penance  for  a  life 
of  no  very  reprehensible  fooleries — taking  oft"  by  degrees 
the  buftbon  mask  which  he  might  feel  he  had  worn  too 


188  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

long— and  rehearsing  for  a  more  solemn  cast  of  part. 
Dying,  he  "  put  on  the  weeds  of  Dominic."  ^ 

If  few  can  remember  Dodd,  many  yet  living  will  not 
easily  forget  the  pleasant  creature,  who  in  those  days 
enacted  the  part  of  the  Clown  to  Dodd's  Sir  Andrew. — 
Richard,  or  rather  Dicky  Suett — for  so  in  his  life-time  he 
delighted  to  be  called,  and  time  hath  ratified  the  appella- 
tion— lieth  buried  on  the  north  side  of  the  cemetery  of 
Holy  Paid,  to  whose  service  his  nonage  and  tender  years 
were  dedicated.  There  are  who  do  yet  remember  him  at 
that  period — his  pipe  clear  and  harmonious.  He  would 
often  speak  of  his  chorister  days,  when  he  was  "  cherub 
Dicky." 

What  clipped  his  wings,  or  made  it  expedient  that  he 
snoidd  exchange  the  holy  for  the  profane  state ;  whether 
he  had  lost  his  good  voice  (his  best  recommendation  to 
that  office),  like  Sir  John,  "  with  hallooing  and  singing 
of  anthems;"  or  whether  he  was  adjudged  to  lack  some- 
thing, even  in  those  early  years,  of  the  gravity  indispens- 
able to  an  occupation  which  professeth  to  "  commerce 
with  the  skies,  "^ — I  could  never  rightly  learn  ;  but  we  fiud 
him,  after  the  j^robation  of  a  twelvemonth  or  so,  reverting 
to  a  secular  condition  and  become  one  of  us. 

I  think  he  was  not  altogether  of  that  timber  out  of 
which  cathedral  seats  and  sounding-boards  are  hewed. 
But  if  a  glad  heart — kind,  and  therefore  glad — be  any 
part  of  sanctity,  then  might  the  robe  of  Motley,  with 
which  he  invested  himself  with  so  much  humility  after 
his  deprivation,  and  which  he  wore  so  long  with  so  much 

^  Dodd  was  a  man  of  reading,  and  left  at  liis  death  a  choice  col- 
lection of  old  English  literature.  I  shonld  judge  him  to  have  been 
a  man  of  wit.  I  know  one  instance  of  an  inqiromptn  which  no  length 
of  study  could  have  bettered.  My  merry  friend,  Jem  White,  had 
seen  him  one  evening  in  Aguecheek,  and  recognising  Dodd  the  next 
day  in  Fleet  Street,  was  irresistibly  impelled  to  take  off  his  hat  and 
salute  him  as  the  identical  Knight  of  the  preceding  evening  with  a 
"Save  you,  Sir  Andreiv."  Dodd,  not  at  all  disconcerted  at  this 
unusual  address  from  a  stranger,  with  a  courteous  half-rebukiug 
wave  of  the  hand,  put  him  oft'  with  an  "Away,  Foul.^' 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.       189 

blameless  satisfaction  to  himself  and  to  the  pnljlic,  be 
accepted  foi-  a  surplice — his  white  stole,  and  alhe. 

The  first  fniits  of  his  secidarization  was  an  engagement 
upon  the  boards  of  Old  Dnuy,  at  which  theatre  he  com- 
menced, as  I  have  been  told,  with  adopting  the  manner 
of  Parsons  in  old  men's  characters.  At  the  period  in 
which  most  of  ns  knew  him,  he  was  no  more  an  imitator 
than  he  was  in  any  true  sense  himself  imitable. 

He  was  the  Robin  Goodfellow  of  the  stage.  He  came 
in  to  trouble  aU  things  with  a  welcome  perplexity,  him- 
self no  whit  troubled  for  the  matter.  He  was  known, 
like  Puck,  by  his  note — Ha  /  Ha  !  Ha  ! — sometimes 
deepening  to  Ho  !  Ho  !  Ho  !  with  an  irresistible  accession, 
derived,  perhaps,  remotely  from  his  ecclesiastical  educa- 
tion, foreign  to  his  prototj^^e  of — 0  La  !  Thousands  of 
hearts  yet  respond  to  the  chuckling  0  La!  of  Dicky 
Suett,  brought  back  to  their  remembrance  by  the  faithful 
transcript  of  his  friend  Mathews's  mimicry.  The  "  force 
of  natiu-e  coidd  no  fmiher  go."  He  drolled  upon  the 
stock  of  these  two  syllables  richer  than  the  cuckoo. 

Care,  that  troubles  all  the  world,  was  forgotten  in  his 
composition.  Had  he  had  but  two  grains  (nay,  half  a 
grain)  of  it,  he  coiUd  never  have  supported  himself  upon 
those  two  spider's  strings,  which  served  him  (in  the  latter 
part  of  his  luimixed  existence)  as  legs.  A  doubt  or  a 
scniple  must  have  made  him  totter,  a  sigh  have  puffed 
him  do^\-n ;  the  weight  of  a  frown  had  staggered  him,  a 
wrinkle  made  him  lose  his  balance.  But  on  he  went, 
scrambling  upon  those  airy  stilts  of  his,  with  Robin  Good- 
fellow,  "  thorough  brake,  thorough  briar,"  reckless  of  a 
scratched  face  or  a  torn  doublet. 

Shakspeare  foresaw  him,  when  he  framed  his  fools  and 
jesters.  They  have  all  the  true  Suett  stamp,  a  loose  and 
shambling  gait,  a  slippery  tongue,  this  last  the  ready  mid- 
wife to  a  without-pain-delivered  jest ;  in  words,  light  as 
air,  venting  truths  deep  as  the  centre  ;  with  itUest  rhymes 
tagging  conceit  when  busiest,  singing  with  Lear  in  the 
tempest,  or  Sir  Toby  at  the  buttery-hatch. 


190  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Jack  Baiini.ster  and  ho  had  the  fortune  to  bo  more  of 
personal  favourites  with  the  town  than  any  actors  before 
or  after.  The  difference,  I  take  it,  was  this  : — Jack  was 
more  beloved  for  liis  sweet,  good-natured,  moral  preten- 
sions. Dicky  Avas  more  liked  for  liis  sweet,  good-natured, 
no  pretensions  at  alL  Your  whole  conscience  stirred  with 
Bannister's  performance  of  Walter  in  the  Children  in  the 
Wood — but  Dicky  seemed  like  a  thing,  as  Shakspeare 
says  of  Love,  too  young  to  know  what  conscience  is.  He 
put  us  into  Vesta's  days.  Evil  fled  before  him — not  as 
from  Jack,  as  from  an  antagonist, — but  because  it  could 
not  touch  him,  any  more  than  a  cannon-ball  a  fly.  He 
was  delivered  from  the  burthen  of  that  death  ;  and,  when 
Death  came  himself,  not  in  metaphor,  to  fetch  Dicky,  it 
is  recorded  of  him  by  Robert  Palmer,  who  kindly  watched 
his  exit,  that  he  received  the  last  stroke,  neither  varying 
his  accustomed  tranquillity,  nor  tune,  with  the  simple  ex- 
clamation, worthy  to  have  been  recorded  in  his  epitajih — 
0  La/  0  La  !  Bobby  I 

The  elder  Palmer  (of  stage-trading  celebrity)  commonly 
played  Sir  Toby  in  those  days ;  but  there  is  a  solidity  of 
wit  in  the  jests  of  that  half- Falstaff"  which  he  did  not 
quite  fill  out.  He  was  as  much  too  showy  as  Moody 
(who  sometimes  took  the  part)  was  dry  and  sottish.  In 
sock  or  buskin  there  was  an  air  of  swaggering  gentility 
about  Jack  Palmer.  He  was  a  gentleman  with  a  slight 
infusion  of  the  footman.  His  brother  Bob  (of  recenter 
memory),  wlio  was  his  shadow  in  everything  while  he 
lived,  and  dwindled  into  less  than  a  shadow  afterwards— 
was  a  gentleman  with  a  little  stronger  infusion  of  the 
latter  ingredient;  that  was  all.  It  is  amazing  how  a 
little  of  the  more  or  less  makes  a  difference  in  these  things. 
When  you  saw  Bobby  in  the  "  Duke's  Servant,^  you  said, 
"  What  a  pity  such  a  pretty  fellow  was  only  a  servant !" 
When  you  saw  Jack  figuring  in  Captain  Absolute,  you 
thought  you  could  trace  his  promotion  to  some  lady  of 
quality  who  fancied  the  handsome  fellow  in  )iis  topknot, 
^  High  Life  Below  Stairs. 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  191 

and  had  bought  him  a  commission.     Therefore  Jack  in 
Dick  Amlet  was  insuperable. 

Jack  had  two  voices,  both  plausible,  hjqiocritical,  and 
insinuating ;  but  his  secondary  or  supplemental  voice  still 
more  decisively  histrionic  than  his  common  one.  It  was 
reserved  for  the  spectator ;  and  the  drcanatis  jwrsonce  were 
supposed  to  know  nothing  at  all  about  it.  The  lies  of 
Young  Wilding,  and  the  sentiments  in  Joseph  Surface, 
were  thus  marked  out  in  a  sort  of  italics  to  the  audience. 
This  secret  correspondence  with  the  company  before  the 
cm-tain  (which  is  the  bane  and  death  of  tragedy)  has  an 
extremely  hapi^y  effect  in  some  kinds  of  comedy,  in  the 
more  highly  artificial  comedy  of  Congreve  or  of  Sheridan 
especially,  where  the  absolute  sense  of  reality  (so  indis- 
pensable to  scenes  of  interest)  is  not  required,  or  would 
rather  interfere  to  diminish  your  pleasme.  The  fact  is, 
you  do  not  believe  in  such  characters  as  Surface — the 
villain  of  artificial  comedy — even  while  you  read  or  see 
them.  If  you  did,  they  would  shock  and  not  tlivert  you. 
When  Ben,  in  Love  for  Love,  returns  from  sea,  the  fol- 
lo^ving  exquisite  dialogue  occurs  at  his  first  meeting  with 
his  father : — 

Sir  Samjjson.  Thou  hast  been  many  a  weary  league,  Ben,  since 
I  saw  thee. 

Ben.  Ey,  ej',  beeu.  Been  far  enough,  an  that  he  alL — Well, 
father,  and  how  do  all  at  home  ?  how  does  brother  Dick  and  brother 
Val? 

Sir  Samjpson.  Dick  !  body  o"  me,  Dick  has  been  dead  these  two 
years.     I  writ  you  word  when  you  were  at  Leghorn. 

Ben.  Mess,  that's  true  ;  Marry,  I  had  forgot.  Dick's  dead,  as 
you  say — well,  and  how  ? — I  have  a  many  questions  to  ask  you. 

Here  is  an  instance  of  insensibility  whicli  in  real  life 
would  be  revolting,  or  rather  in  real  life  coidd  not  have 
co-existed  with  the  warm-hearted  temperament  of  the  cha- 
racter. But  when  you  read  it  in  the  spirit  with  which 
such  i^layful  selections  and  specious  comliinations  rather 
than  strict  metaph?'ases  of  nature  should  be  taken,  or  when 
you  saw  Bannister  play  it,  it  neither  did,  nor  does,  womid 


192  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

the  moral  sense  at  all.  For  what  is  Ben — the  pleasant 
sailor  which  Bannister  gives  us — but  a  piece  of  satire — a 
creation  of  Gongreve's  fancy — a  dreamy  combination  of 
all  the  accidents  of  a  sailor's  character — his  contempt  of 
money — his  credulity  to  women — with  that  necessary 
estrangement  from  home  which  it  is  just  within  the  verge 
of  credibility  to  suppose  might  produce  such  an  hallucina- 
tion as  is  here  described.  We  never  think  the  worse  of 
Ben  for  it,  or  feel  it  as  a  stain  iipon  his  character.  But 
when  an  actor  comes,  and  instead  of  the  delightfid  phan- 
tom— the  creatvu-e  dear  to  half-belief — which  Bannister 
exhibited — displays  before  our  eyes  a  downright  concretion 
of  a  Wapping  sailor — a  jolly  warm-hearted  Jack  Tar — 
and  nothing  else — when  instead  of  investing  it  with  a 
delicious  confusedness  of  the  head,  and  a  veering  undi- 
rected goodness  of  purpose — he  gives  to  it  a  downright 
daylight  understanding,  and  a  full  consciousness  of  its 
actions ;  thrusting  forward  the  sensibilities  of  the  charac- 
ter with  a  pretence  as  if  it  stood  upon  nothing  else,  and 
was  to  be  judged  by  them  alone— we  feel  the  discord  of 
the  thing ;  the  scene  is  disturbed ;  a  real  man  has  got  in 
among  the  dramatis  j^ersonoi,  and  puts  them  out.  We 
want  the  sailor  turned  out.  We  feel  that  his  true  place  is 
not  behind  the  cm'tain,  but  in  the  first  or  second  gallery. 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE 
LAST  CENTURY. 

The  artificial  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of  manners,  is  quite 
extinct  on  our  stage.  Congreve  and  Farquhar  show  their 
heads  once  in  seven  years  only,  to  be  exploded  and  put 
down  instantly.  The  times  cannot  bear  them.  Is  it  for 
a  few  wild  speeches,  an  occasional  license  of  dialogue  I  I 
think  not  altogether.  The  business  of  their  dramatic 
characters  will  not  stand  the   moral   test.     We   screw 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  LAST  CENTURY.     193 

everything  np  to  that.  Idle  gallantry  in  a  fiction,  a  dream, 
the  passing  pageant  of  an  evening,  startles  us  in  the  same 
way  as  the  alarming  indications  of  profligacy  in  a  son  or 
ward  in  real  life  should  startle  a  parent  or  guardian.  We 
have  no  such  middle  emotions  as  dramatic  interests  left. 
We  see  a  stage  libertine  playing  his  loose  pranks  of  two 
hours'  duration,  and  of  no  after  consequence,  with  the 
severe  eyes  which  inspect  real  vices  with  their  bearings 
u[)on  two  worlds.  We  are  spectators  to  a  plot  or  intrigue; 
(not  reducible  in  life  to  tlie  point  of  strict  morality),  and 
take  it  all  for  truth.  We  substitute  a  real  for  a  dramatic 
person,  and  judge  him  accordingly.  We  try  him  in  our 
courts,  from  which  there  is  no  appeal  to  the  dramatis 
persona',  his  peers.  We  have  been  spoiled  with — not  sen- 
timent;d  comedy — but  a  tyi'ant  far  more  pernicious  to  our 
pleasures  wliich  has  succeeded  to  it,  the  exclusive  and  all- 
devouring  drama  of  common  life  ;  where  tlie  moral  point 
is  everything  ;  where,  instead  of  the  fictitious  half-believed 
personages  of  the  stage  (the  phantoms  of  old  comedy),  we 
recognise  ourselves,  our  brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies, 
patrons,  enemies, — -the  same  as  in  life, — with  an  interest 
in  wliat  is  going  on  so  hearty  and  substantial,  that  we 
cannot  attbrd  om-  moral  judgment,  in  its  deepest  and  most 
vital  results,  to  compromise  or  slumber  for  a  moment. 
What  is  there  transacting,  by  no  modification  is  made  to 
aff'ect  us  in  any  other  manner  than  the  same  events  or 
characters  would  do  in  om-  relationships  of  life.  We 
carry  our  fire-side  concerns  to  tlie  theatre  with  us.  We 
do  not  go  thither  like  om-  ancestors,  to  escape  from  the 
pressure  of  reality,  so  much  as  to  confirm  our  experi- 
ence of  it ;  to  make  assm-ance  double,  and  take  a  bond  of 
fate.  We  must  live  om-  toilsome  lives  twice  over,  as  it 
was  the  mournful  privilege  of  Ulysses  to  descend  twice 
to  the  shades.  All  that  neutral  ground  of  character, 
which  stood  between  vice  and  virtue ;  or  which  in  fact 
was  indifterent  to  neither,  where  neither  properly  was 
called  in  question ;  that  happy  breathing-place  from  the 
burthen  of  a  perpetual  moral  questioning — the  sanctuary 
O 


194  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

and  quiet  Alsatia  of  himted  casuistry — is  broken  up  and 
disfranc-liised,  as  injurious  to  the  interests  of  society. 
The  ])rivileges  of  the  phice  are  taken  away  by  hxw.  We 
dare  not  dally  with  images,  or  names,  of  Avi'oug.  We 
bark  like  foolish  dogs  at  shadows.  We  dread  infection 
from  the  scenic  representation  of  disorder,  and  fear  a 
painted  pustule.  In  om'  anxiety  that  our  morality  should 
not  take  cold,  we  wrajD  it  up  in  a  gi'eat  blanket  surtout 
of  precaution  against  the  breeze  and  sunshine. 

I  confess  for  myself  that  (with  no  great  delinquencies 
to  answer  for)  I  am  glad  for  a  season  to  take  an  airing 
beyond  the  diocese  of  the  strict  conscience, — not  to  live 
always  in  the  i^recincts  of  the  law  courts, — but  now  and 
then,  for  a  dream-while  or  so,  to  imagine  a  world  wdth  no 
meddling  restrictions — to  get  into  recesses,  whither  the 
hunter  cannot  follow  me — 

—  Secret  shades 

Of  woody  Ida's  inmost  gi'ove, 
While  yet  there  was  uo  fear  of  Jove. 

I  come  back  to  my  cage  and  my  restraint  the  fresher  and 
more  healthy  for  it.  I  wear  my  shackles  more  contentedly 
for  having  respired  the  breath  of  an  imaginary  freetlom.  I 
do  not  know  how  it  is  with  others,  but  I  feel  the  better 
always  for  the  perusal  of  oneof  Congreve's — nay,  why  should 
I  not  add  even  of  Wycherley's — comedies.  1  am  the  gayer 
at  least  for  it ;  and  I  could  never  connect  those  sports  of  a 
witty  fancy  in  any  sha2:)e  with  any  result  to  be  dra^Ti  from 
tliem  to  imitation  in  real  life.  They  are  a  world  of  them- 
selves almost  as  much  as  fairy  land.  Take  one  of  their 
characters,  male  or  female  (with  few  excejitions  they  are 
alike),  and  place  it  in  a  modern  play,  and  my  virtuous 
imlignation  sliall  rise  against  the  profligate  wretch  as 
warmly  as  the  Catos  of  the  pit  could  desire ;  because  in  a 
modern  play  I  am  to  judge  of  the  right  and  the  wrong. 
The  standard  of  jmlke  is  the  measure  of  liolitkal  justice. 
The  atmosphere  will  blight  it ;  it  cannot  live  here.  It 
has  got  into  a  moral  world,  where  it  has  no  business, 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  LAST  CENTURY.     195 

from  which  it  must  needs  fall  heatUong ;  as  dizzy,  and 
incapable  of  making  a  stand,  as  a  Swedenborgian  bad 
spirit  that  has  wandered  unawares  into  the  sphere  of  one 
of  his  Good  Men,  or  Angels.  But  in  its  own  world  do 
we  feel  the  creatiu-e  is  so  very  bad  ? — The  FainalLs  and 
the  Mirabels,  the  Dorimants  and  the  Lady  Touchwoods, 
in  their  own  sphere,  do  not  ofiend  my  moral  sense ;  in 
fact,  they  do  not  appeal  to  it  at  all.  They  seem  engaged 
in  their  proper  element.  They  break  througli  no  laws  or 
conscientious  restraints.  They  know  of  none.  They 
have  got  out  of  Christendom  into  the  land — what  shaU  I 
call  it  ? — of  cuckoldry — the  Utopia  of  gallantly,  where 
pleasure  is  duty,  and  the  manners  perfect  freedom.  It  is 
altogether  a  specidative  scene  of  things,  which  has  no  re- 
ference whatever  to  the  world  that  is.  No  good  person 
can  be  justly  offended  as  a  spectator,  because  no  good 
person  suffers  on  the  stage.  Judged  morally,  every 
character  in  these  plays- — the  few  exceptions  only  are 
mistalrs — is  alike  essentially  vain  and  worthless.  The 
great  art  of  Congreve  is  especially  shown  in  this,  that  he 
has  entirely  excluded  from  his  scenes — some  little  gene- 
rosities in  the  part  of  Angelica  j^erhaps  excepted- — not 
only  anything  like  a  faultless  character,  but  any  pre- 
tensions to  goodness  or  good  feelings  whatsoever.  Whether 
he  did  this  designedly,  or  instinctively,  the  effect  is  as 
hapjjy  as  the  design  (if  design)  was  bold.  I  used  to 
wonder  at  the  strange  power  which  his  AVay  of  the  World 
in  particidar  possesses  of  interesting  you  all  along  in  the 
})ursuits  of  characters,  for  whom  you  absolutely  care 
nothing — for  you  neither  hate  nor  love  his  personages — 
and  I  think  it  is  owing  to  this  very  indifference  for  any, 
that  j'ou  endm'e  the  whole.  He  has  spread  a  privation 
of  moral  light,  I  will  call  it,  rather  than  by  the  ugly 
name  of  palpable  darkness,  over  his  creations  ;  and  his 
shadows  iiit  before  you  ^\ithout  distinction  or  j^reference. 
Had  he  introduced  a  good  character,  a  single  giish  of 
moral  feeling,  a  revulsion  of  the  judgment  to  actual  life 
and  actual  duties,  the  impertinent   Goshen  woidd  have 


196  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

only  liglited  to  the  discovery  of  deformities,  which  now 
are  none,  because  we  think  them  none. 

Translated  into  real  life,  the  characters  of  his,  and  his 
friend  Wycherley's  dramas,  are  profligates  and  stnimpcts, 
— the  business  of  their  brief  existence,  the  luidividcd  pur- 
suit of  lawless  gallantry.  No  other  spring  of  action,  or 
possible  motive  of  conduct,  is  recognised ;  principles 
which,  universally  acted  upon,  must  redu('e  this  frame  of 
things  to  a  chaos.  But  we  do  them  wrong  in  so  trans- 
lating them.  No  such  efl'ects  are  produced,  in  their 
world.  When  we  are  among  them,  we  are  amongst  a 
chaotic  people.  We  are  not  to  judge  them  by  our 
usages.  No  reverend  institutions  are  insulted  by  their 
proceedings — for  they  have  none  among  them.  No  peace 
of  families  is  violated — for  no  family  ties  exist  among 
them.  No  purity  of  the  marriage  bed  is  stained — for 
none  is  supposed  t(j  have  a  being.  No  deep  aticctions 
are  disquieted,  no  holy  wedlock  bands  are  snapped 
asunder — for  aftection's  depth  and  wedded  faith  are  not 
of  tlie  growth  of  that  soil.  There  is  neither  right  nor 
Avi'ong, — gratitude  or  its  opposite, — claim  or  (Uity, — 
paternity  or  sonship.  Of  what  consequence  is  it  to  Virtue, 
or  how  is  she  at  all  concerned  about  it,  whether  8ir  Simon 
or  Dapj)erwit  steal  away  Miss  Martlia ;  or  who  is  the 
father  of  Lord  Froth's  or  Sir  Paul  Pliant's  children  ? 

The  whole  is  a  passing  pageant,  where  we  should  sit 
as  unconcerned  at  the  issues,  for  life  or  deatli,  as  at  the 
battle  of  the  frogs  and  mice.  But,  like  Don  Quixote, 
we  take  part  against  the  puppets,  and  quite  as  imperti- 
nently. We  dare  not  contemplate  an  Atlantis,  a  scheme, 
out  of  which  our  coxcombical  moral  sense  is  for  a  little 
transitory  ease  excluded.  We  have  not  the  courage  to 
imagine  a  state  of  things  for  which  there  is  neither 
reward  nor  punishment.  We  cling  to  the  painful  neces- 
sities of  shame  and  blame.  We  would  indict  our  very 
dreams. 

Amidst  the  mortifying  circumstances  attendant  upon 
growing  old,  it  is  something  to  have  seen  the  School  for 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  LAST  CENTURY.     197 

Scandal  in  its  glory.  This  comedy  grew  out  of  Con- 
greve  and  Wycherley,  but  gathered  some  allays  of  the 
sentimental  comedy  which  followed  theirs.  It  is  im- 
possible that  it  should  be  now  acted,  though  it  continues, 
at  long  intervals,  to  be  announced  in  the  bills.  Its  hero, 
when  Palmer  played  it  at  least,  was  Joseph  Siuface. 
When  I  remember  the  gay  boldness,  the  gracefid  solemn 
plausibility,  the  measured  step,  the  insinuating  voice — to 
express  it  in  a  word — the  downright  acted  villany  of  the 
part,  so  different  from  the  pressure  of  conscious  actual 
wickedness, — the  hypocritical  assumption  of  hypocrisy, — 
which  made  Jack  so  deservedly  a  ftivoiirite  in  that  char- 
acter, I  must  needs  conclude  the  present  generation  of 
I^laygoers  more  virtuous  than  myself,  or  more  dense.  I 
freely  confess  that  he  divided  the  palm  with  me  with  his 
better  brother ;  that,  in  fact,  I  liked  him  quite  as  well. 
Not  but  there  are  passages,  — •  like  that,  for  instance, 
where  Joseph  is  made  to  refuse  a  pittance  to  a  poor  re- 
lation,— incongruities  which  Sheridan  was  forced  upon 
by  the  attempt  to  join  the  artificial  with  the  sentimental 
comedy,  either  of  which  must  destroy  the  other — but 
over  these  obstructions  Jack's  manner  floated  him  so 
lightly,  that  a  refusal  from  him  no  more  shocked  you, 
than  the  easy  compliance  of  Charles  gave  you  in  reality 
any  pleasure ;  you  got  over  the  paltry  question  as  quickly 
as  you  could,  to  get  back  into  the  regions  of  pure  comedy, 
where  no  cold  moral  reigns.  The  highly  artificial 
manner  of  Palmer  in  this  character  counteracted  every 
disagreeable  impression  which  you  might  have  received 
from  the  contrast,  supposing  them  real,  between  the  two 
brothers.  You  did  not  believe  in  Joseph  with  the  same 
fkitli  with  which  you  believed  in  Charles.  The  latter 
was  a  pleasant  reality,  the  former  a  no  less  pleasant 
poetical  foil  to  it.  The  comedy,  I  have  said,  is  incon- 
gmous ;  a  mixture  of  Congreve  with  sentimental  incom- 
patibilities ;  the  gaiety  upon  the  whole  is  buoyant ;  but 
it  required  the  consummate  art  of  Palmer  to  reconcile  the 
discordant  elements. 


198  THE  ESSAYS  OE  ELI  A.    ■ 

A  pliiyor  with  Jack's  talents,  if  wo  had  one  now, 
wonld  not  dare  to  do  the  part  in  the  same  manner.  He 
would  instinctively  avoid  every  tiu-n  which  might  tend 
to  unrealise,  and  so  to  make  the  character  fascinating. 
He  must  take  his  cue  from  his  spectators,  who  would 
expect  a  bad  man  and  a  good  man  as  rigidly  opposed  to 
each  other  as  the  deathbeds  of  those  geniuses  are  con- 
trasted in  the  prints,  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  have  dis- 
appeared from  the  windows  of  my  old  friend  Carrington 
Bowles,  of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  memory  —  (an  exhi- 
bition as  venerable  as  the  adjacent  cathedral,  and  almost 
coeval)  of  the  bad  and  good  man  at  the  horn'  of  death ; 
where  the  ghastly  apprehensions  of  the  former,  —  and 
truly  the  grim  phantom  with  his  reality  of  a  toasting-fork 
is  not  to  be  despised, — so  finely  contrast  with  the  meek 
complacent  kissing  of  the  rod, — taking  it  in  like  honey 
and  butter, — with  which  the  latter  submits  to  the  scythe 
of  the  gentle  bleeder.  Time,  who  wields  his  lancet  with 
the  apprehensive  finger  of  a  popular  young  ladies'  surgeon. 
What  flesh,  like  loving  grass,  would  not  covet  to  meet  half 
way  the  stroke  of  such  a  delicate  mower  1 — John  Palmer 
was  twice  an  actor  in  this  exquisite  part.  He  was  playing 
to  you  all  the  while  that  he  was  plajdug  upon  Sir  Peter 
and  his  lady.  You  had  the  first  intimation  of  a  senti- 
ment before  it  was  on  his  lips.  His  altered  voice  was 
meant  to  you,  and  you  were  to  suppose  that  his  fictitious 
co-flutterers  on  the  stage  perceived  nothing  at  all  of  it. 
What  was  it  to  you  if  that  half  reality,  the  husband,  was 
overreached  by  the  puppetry — or  the  thin  thing  (Lady 
Teazle's  reputation)  was  persuaded  it  was  dying  of  a 
pletliory  ?  The  fortunes  of  Othello  and  Desdemona  were 
not  concerned  in  it.  Poor  Jack  has  passed  from  the 
stage  in  good  time,  that  he  did  not  live  to  this  our  age  of 
seriousness.  The  pleasant  old  Teazle  Kincf,  too,  is  gone 
in  good  time.  His  manner  w^ould  scarce  have  passed 
current  in  our  day.  We  must  love  or  hate — acquit  or 
condemn — censiu'e  or  pity — exert  our  detestable  cox- 
combry  of  moral  judgment  upon   everything.      Joseph 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  LAST  CENTURY.     199 

Siuface,  to  go  down  now,  must  1)C  a  downright  revolting 
villain — no  compromise — his  first  ajipearance  must  shock 
and  give  liorror — his  specious  plausibilities,  which  the 
pleasurable  faculties  of  om-  fathers  welcomed  with  such 
hearty  greetings,  knowing  that  no  harm  (dramatic  harm 
even)  coidd  come,  or  was  meant  to  come,  of  them,  must 
iusi^ire  a  cold  and  killing  aversion.  Charles  (the  real 
canting  person  of  the  scene — for  the  hypocrisy  of  Joseph 
has  its  ulterior  legitimate  ends,  but  his  brother's  pro- 
fessions of  a  good  heart  centre  in  downright  self-satis- 
faction) must  be  loved,  and  Joseph  hated.  To  balance 
one  disagreeable  reality  with  another,  Sir  Peter  Teazle 
must  be  no  longer  the  comic  idea  of  a  fretful  old  bachelor 
bridegroom,  whose  teasings  while  King  acted  it)  were 
evidently  as  much  played  off  at  you,  as  they  were  meant 
to  concern  anybody  on  the  stage,^he  must  be  a  real 
person,  capaljle  in  law  of  sustaining  an  injury — a  person 
towards  whom  duties  are  to  be  acknowledged  —  the 
genuine  crim.  con.  antagonist  of  the  villanous  seducer 
Joseph.  To  realise  him  more,  his  sufferings  under  his 
unfortunate  match  must  have  the  downright  pungency 
of  life — must  (or  shoidd)  make  you  not  mirthful  but  un- 
comfortable, just  as  the  same  predicament  would  move 
you  in  a  neighbour  or  old  friend. 

The  delicious  scenes  which  give  the  jilay  its  name  and 
zest,  must  affect  you  in  the  same  serious  manner  as  if 
you  heard  the  reputation  of  a  dear  female  friend  attacked 
in  your  real  presence.  Crabtree  and  Sir  Benjamin — 
those  poor  snakes  that  live  but  in  the  simshine  of  yom- 
mirth — must  be  ripened  by  this  hot-bed  process  of  real- 
ization into  asps  or  amphisbtenas ;  and  Mrs.  Candour — 
0  !  frightfid  ! — become  a  hooded  serpent.  0  !  who  that 
remembers  Parsons  and  Dodd — the  wasp  and  butterfly 
of  the  School  for  Scandal — in  those  two  characters ;  and 
charming  natural  Miss  Pope,  the  perfect  gentlewoman  as 
distinguished  from  the  fine  lady  of  comedy,  in  this  latter 
part — woidd  forego  the  true  scenic  delight — the  escape 
from  life — the  oblivion  of  consequences — the  holiday 


200  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

barring  out  of  tlic  pcclaut  Eeflectioii — those  Saturnalia 
of  two  or  three  brief  hom-s,  well  won  from  the  world — 
to  sit  instead  at  one  of  om*  modern  plays — to  have  his 
coward  conscience  (that  forsooth  must  not  be  left  for  a 
moment)  stimulated  with  perj^etual  appeals  —  diUled 
rather,  and  blunted,  as  a  facidty  wathout  repose  must  be 
— and  his  moral  vanity  pampered  with  images  of  notional 
justice,  notional  beneficence,  lives  saved  without  the 
spectator's  risk,  and  fortunes  given  away  that  cost  the 
author  nothing  1 

No  piece  was,  perhaps,  ever  so  completely  cast  in  all 
its  jjarts  as  this  manager^s  comedy.  Miss  Farren  had 
succeeded  to  Mrs.  Abington  in  Lady  Teazle ;  and  Smith, 
the  original  Charles,  had  retired  when  I  first  saw  it. 
The  rest  of  the  characters,  with  very  slight  exceptions, 
remained.  I  remember  it  was  then  the  fashion  to  cry 
down  John  Kemble,  who  took  the  part  of  Charles  after 
Smith ;  but,  I  thought,  very  unjustly.  Smith,  I  fancy, 
was  more  airy,  and  took  the  eye  with  a  certain  gaiety  of 
person.  He  brought  with  him  no  sombre  recollections  of 
tragedy.  He  had  not  to  expiate  the  faidt  of  having 
pleased  beforehand  in  lofty  declamation.  He  had  no  sins 
of  Hamlet  or  of  Richard  to  atone  for.  His  faiku'e  in 
these  parts  was  a  passport  to  success  in  one  of  so  opposite 
a  tendency.  But,  as  for  as  I  coidd  judge,  the  weighty 
sense  of  Kemble  made  up  for  more  personal  incapacity 
than  he  had  to  answer  for.  His  harshest  tones  in  this 
part  came  steeped  and  dulcified  in  good  humom\  He 
made  his  defects  a  grace.  His  exact  declamatory  manner, 
as  he  managed  it,  only  served  to  convey  the  points  of  his 
dialogue  with  more  precision.  It  seemed  to  head  the 
shafts  to  carry  them  deeper.  Not  one  of  his  sparkling 
sentences  was  lost.  I  remember  miniitely  how  he  de- 
livered each  in  succession,  and  cannot  by  any  effort 
imagine  how  any  of  them  could  be  altered  for  the  better. 
No  man  could  deliver  brilliant  dialogue — the  dialogue  of 
Congreve  or  of  Wycherley — because  none  imderstood  it 
— half  so  well  as  John  Kemble.     His  Valentine,  in  Love 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN.  201 

I'or  Love,  was,  to  my  recollection,  faultless.  He  flagged 
sometimes  in  the  intervals  of  tragic  passion.  He  would 
slumber  over  the  level  parts  of  an  heroic  character.  His 
Macbeth  has  been  kno^vTi  to  nod.  But  he  always  seemed 
to  me  to  be  particularly  alive  to  pointed  and  witty 
dialogue.  The  relaxing  levities  of  tragedy  have  not  been 
touched  by  any  since  him — the  pla\-ful  court-bred  spirit 
in  which  he  condescended  to  the  players  in  Hamlet — the 
sportive  relief  which  he  threw  into  the  darker  shades  of 
Richard — disappeared  with  him.  He  had  his  sluggish 
moods,  his  torpors — but  they  were  the  halting-stones  and 
resting-place  of  his  tragedy  • —  politic  savings,  and  fetches 
of  the  breath — husbandry  of  the  lungs,  where  nature 
pointed  him  to  be  an  economist — rather,  I  think  than 
errors  of  the  judgment.  They  were,  at  worst,  less  pain- 
ful than  the  eternal  tormenting  imappeasable  vigilance, — 
the  "lidless  dragon  eyes,"  of  present  fashionable  tragedy. 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN. 

Not  many  nights  ago  I  had  come  home  from  seeing  this 
extraordinary  performer  in  Cockletop  ;  and  when  I  retired 
to  my  pillow,  his  whimsical  image  still  stuck  by  me,  in  a 
maimer  as  to  threaten  sleep.  In  vain  I  tried  to  divest 
myself  of  it,  by  coujiuing  up  the  most  opposite  associa- 
tions. I  resolved  to  be  serious.  I  raised  up  the  gravest 
topics  of  life  ;  private  misery,  public  calamity.  All  would 
not  do : 

There  the  antic  sate 

Mocking  our  state 

his  queer  visnomy — his  bewildering  costume — all  the 
strange  things  which  he  had  raked  together — his  serpen- 
tine rod  swagging  about  in  his  pocket — Cleopatra's  tear, 
and  the  rest  of  his  relics — O'Keefe's  wild  force,  and  hu 
wilder  commentary — till  the  passion  of  laughter,   like 


202  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

grief  in  excess,  relieved  itself  by  its  own  weight,  inviting 
the  slee]i  which  in  the  first  instance  it  had  driven  away. 

But  I  was  not  to  escape  so  easily.  No  sooner  did  I 
foil  into  slumbers,  than  the  same  image,  only  more  per- 
plexing, assailed  me  in  the  shape  of  dreams.  Not  one 
Munden,  but  five  hundred,  were  dancing  before  me,  like 
the  faces  which,  whether  you  will  or  no,  come  when  you 
have  been  taking  opium — all  the  strange  combinations, 
which  this  strangest  of  all  strange  mortals  ever  shot  his 
proper  countenance  into,  from  the  day  he  came  commis- 
sioned to  dry  up  the  tears  of  the  town  for  the  loss  of  the 
now"  almost  forgotten  Edwin.  O  for  the  power  of  the 
pencil  to  have  fixed  them  when  I  awoke  !  A  season  or 
two  since,  there  was  exhibited  a  Hogarth  gallery.  I  do 
not  see  why  there  should  not  be  a  Munden  gallery.  In 
richness  and  variety,  the  latter  would  not  fall  far  short  of 
the  former. 

There  is  one  face  of  Farley,  one  face  of  Knight,  one 
(but  what  a  one  it  is  !)  of  Liston  ;  but  Munden  has  none 
that  you  can  properly  pin  down,  and  call  his.  When  you 
think  he  has  exhausted  his  battery  of  looks,  in  unaccount- 
able warfare  with  your  gravity,  suddenly  he  sprouts  out 
an  entirely  new  set  of  features,  like  Hydra.  He  is  not 
one,  but  legion  ;  not  so  much  a  ctimedian,  as  a  company. 
If  his  name  could  be  multiplied  like  his  countenance,  it 
might  fill  a  play-bill.  He,  and  he  alone,  literally  makes 
faces:  applied  to  any  other  person,  the  ]ihrase  is  a  mere 
figure,  denoting  certain  modifications  of  the  human  coun- 
tenance. Out  of  some  invisible  wardrobe  he  dips  for  faces, 
as  his  friend  Suett  used  for  wigs,  and  fetches  them  out  as 
easily.  I  should  not  be  siu"prised  to  see  him  some  day 
put  out  the  head  of  a  river-horse  :  or  come  forth  a  pewitt, 
or  lapwing,  some  feathered  metamorphosis. 

I  have  seen  tliis  gifted  actor  in  Sir  Christopher  Curry 
— in  old  Dornton — diff'use  a  glow  of  sentiment  which  has 
made  the  pulse  of  a  crowded  theatre  beat  like  that  of  one 
man ;  when  he  has  come  in  aid  of  the  jiulpit,  doing  good 
to  the  moral  heart  of  a  jjeople.     I  have  seen  some  faint 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN.  203 

approaches  to  this  sort  of  excellence  in  other  i)laycrs.  But 
in  the  grand  grotesque  of  farce,  Miinden  stands  out  as 
single  and  luiaccompanied  as  Hogarth.  Hogarth,  strange 
to  tell,  had  no  followers.  The  school  of  IMunden  began, 
and  must  end,  with  himself. 

Can  any  man  ivonder,  like  him  ?  can  any  man  see  ghosts, 
like  him  ?  or  fight  with  his  ovm  sJmdou' — "  sessa" — as 
he  does  in  that  strangely-neglected  thing,  the  Cobbler  of 
Preston — where  his  alternations  from  the  Cobbler  to  the 
Magnifico,  and  from  the  Magnifico  to  the  Cobbler,  keep 
the  brain  of  the  spectator  in  as  wild  a  ferment,  as  if  some 
Arabian  Night  were  being  acted  before  him.  Who  like 
him  can  throw,  or  ever  attempted  to  throw,  a  preter- 
natm-al  interest  over  the  commonest  daily-life  olyects  1  A 
table  or  a  joint-stool,  in  his  conception,  rises  into  a  dignity 
equivalent  to  Cassiopeia's  chair.  It  is  invested  with  con- 
stellatory  importance.  You  could  not  sjicak  of  it  mtli 
more  deference,  if  it  were  mounted  into  the  firmament. 
A  beggar  in  the  hands  of  Michael  Angelo,  says  Fuseli, 
rose  the  Patriarch  of  Poverty.  So  the  gusto  of  Miinden 
antiquates  and  ennobles  what  it  touches.  His  pots  and 
his  ladles  are  as  grand  and  primal  as  the  seething-pots 
and  hooks  seen  in  old  prophetic  vision.  A  tub  of  butter, 
contemplated  by  him,  amoiuits  to  a  Platonic  idea.  He 
understands  a  leg  of  mutton  in  its  quiddity.  He  stands 
wondering,  amid  the  commonplace  materials  of  life,  like 
primaeval  man  \ai\x  the  sun  and  stars  about  him. 


THE  LAST  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE. 

I  DO  not  know  a  pleasure  more  affecting  than  to  range  at 
Avill  over  the  deserted  apartments  of  some  fine  old  family 
mansion.  The  traces  of  extinct  grandeur  admit  of  a 
better  passion  than  envy  :  and  contemplations  on  the  great 
and  good,  whom  we  fan(;y  in  succession  to  have  been  its 
inhabitants,  weave  for  us  illusions,  incompatible  with  the 
bustle  of  modern  occupancy,  and  vanities  of  foolish  present 
aristocracy.  The  same  difference  of  feeling,  I  think,  at- 
tends us  between  entering  an  empty  and  a  crowded  church. 
Ill  the  latter  it  is  chance  but  some  present  human  frailty 
— an  act  of  inattention  on  the  part  of  some  of  tlie  audi- 
tory— or  a  trait  of  afiectation,  or  worse,  vain-glory,  on 
that  of  the  preacher,  jjuts  us  by  our  best  thoughts,  dis- 
harmonising the  place  and  the  occasion.  But  woiddst 
thou  know  the  beauty  of  holiness  1 — go  alone  on  some 
week-day,  borrowing  tlie  keys  of  good  Master  Sexton, 
traverse  the  cool  aisles  of  some  coimtry  chm-ch :  think  of 
the  piety  that  has  kneeled  there — the  congregations,  old 
and  yoimg,  that  have  foimd  consolation  there — the  meek 
pastor — the  docile  parishioner.  With  no  disturbing  emo- 
tions, no  cross  conflicting  comparisons,  drink  in  the  tran- 
quillity of  the  place,  till  thou  thyself  become  as  fixed  and 
motionless  as  the  marble  effigies  that  kneel  and  weep 
around  thee. 

Jounieying  northward  lately,  I  could  not  resist  going 
some  few  miles  out  of  my  road  to  look  upon  the  remains 


20G  THE  ESSAYS  OP  ELTA. 

of  an  old  great  house  witli  wliicli  I  had  been  impressed  in 
this  way  in  infoncy.  I  was  apprised  that  the  owner  of  it 
had  lately  pxdled  it  down  ;  still  I  had  a  vague  notion  that 
it  could  not  all  have  perished, — that  so  nuich  solidity 
with  magnificence  could  not  have  been  crushed  all  at  once 
into  the  mere  dust  and  rubbish  which  I  found  it. 

The  woi'k  of  ruin  had  proceeded  with  a  swift  hand 
indeed,  and  the  demolition  of  a  few  weeks  had  reduced  it 
to — an  antiquity. 

I  was  astonished  at  the  indistiuction  of  everything. 
Where  had  stood  the  great  gates  1  What  bounded  the 
court-yard  1  Whereabout  did  the  out-houses  commence  1 
A  few  bricks  only  lay  as  representatives  of  that  which 
was  so  stately  and  so  spacious. 

Death  does  not  shrink  up  his  human  victim  at  this 
rate.  The  burnt  ashes  of  a  man  weigh  more  in  their 
proportion. 

Had  I  seen  these  brick-and-mortar  knaves  at  their  j^ro- 
cess  of  destruction,  at  the  plucking  of  every  panel  I  should 
have  felt  the  varlets  at  my  heart.  I  should  have  cried 
out  to  them  to  spare  a  plank  at  least  out  of  the  cheerful 
storeroom,  in  whose  hot  window-seat  I  used  to  sit  and 
read  Cowley,  with  the  grass-plot  before,  and  the  hum  and 
flapi^ings  of  that  one  solitary  wasp  that  ever  haunted  it 
about  me — it  is  in  mine  ears  now,  as  oft  as  summer  re- 
turns ;  or  a  panel  of  the  yellow-room. 

Why,  every  plank  and  panel  of  that  house  for  me 
had  magic  in  it.  The  tapestried  bedrooms — tapestry  so 
much  better  than  painting — not  adorning  merely,  but 
peopling  the  wainscots — at  which  childhood  ever  and 
anon  would  steal  a  look,  shifting  its  coverlid  (replaced  as 
quickly)  to  exercise  its  tender  courage  in  a  momentary 
eye-encounter  with  those  stern  bright  visages,  staring 
reciprocally — all  Ovid  on  the  walls,  in  colours  vivider 
than  his  description.  Actteon  in  mid  sprout,  with  the 
unappeasable  prudery  of  Diana ;  and  the  still  more  pro- 
voking and  almost  culinary  coolness  of  Dan  Phoebus,  eel- 
fashion,  deliberately  divesting  of  Marsyas. 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE.  207 

Then,  that  haunted  room — in  which  old  Mrs.  Battle 
died — whereinto  I  have  crejit,  but  always  in  the  daytime, 
with  a  passion  of  fear ;  and  a  sneaking  curiosity,  terror- 
tainted,  to  hold  commmiication  with  the  past. — How  shall 
they  build  it  up  again  ? 

It  was  an  old  deserted  place,  yet  not  so  long  deserted 
that  the  traces  of  the  splendom-  of  past  inmates  were 
everyTvhere  apparent.  Its  furnitm-e  was  still  standing — 
even  to  the  tarnished  gilt  leather  battledores,  and  crumb- 
ling feathers  of  shuttlecocks  in  the  nursery,  which  told 
that  children  had  once  played  there.  But  I  was  a  lonely 
child,  and  had  the  range  at  will  of  every  apartment,  knew 
every  nook  and  corner,  v/ondered  and  worshipj^ed  every- 
where. 

The  solitude  of  childhood  is  not  so  much  the  mother 
of  thought  as  it  is  the  feeder  of  love,  of  silence,  and  ad- 
nuration.  So  strange  a  passion  for  the  place  possessed 
me  in  those  years,  that,  though  there  lay — I  shame  to  say 
how  few  roods  distant  from  the  mansion' — 'half  hid  by 
trees,  what  I  judged  some  romantic  lake,  such  was  the 
spell  which  bound  me  to  the  house,  and  such  my  carefulness 
not  to  pass  its  strict  and  jjroper  precincts,  that  the  idle 
waters  lay  unexplored  for  me ;  and  not  till  late  in  life, 
curiosity  prevailing  over  elder  devotion,  I  found,  to  my 
astonishment,  a  pretty  brawling  brook  had  been  the 
Lacus  lucognitus  of  my  infancy.  Variegated  views,  ex- 
tensive prosjiects — and  those  at  no  great  distance  from 
the  house — I  was  told  of  such — what  were  they  to  me, 
being  out  of  the  boundaries  of  my  Eden  1  So  for  from  a 
wish  to  roam,  I  would  have  drawn,  methought,  still  closer 
the  fences  of  my  chosen  prison,  and  have  been  henmied  in 
by  a  yet  secm'er  cincture  of  those  excluding  garden  walls. 
I  could  have  exclaimed  with  the  garden-loving  poet — 

Bind  me,  ye  woodbines,  in  your  twines  ; 
Curl  nie  about,  ye  gadding  vines  ; 
And  oh  so  close  your  circles  lace. 
That  I  may  never  leave  this  place  ; 
But,  lest  your  fetters  prove  too  weak. 
Ere  I  your  silken  bondage  break, 


208  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Do  you,  0  brambles,  chain  me  too. 
And,  courteous  briars,  uail  me  through.^ 

I  was  here  as  in  a  lonely  temple.  Snug  fire-sides — 
the  low -built  roof — parlours  ten  feet  by  ten — frugal 
boards,  and  all  the  homeliness  of  home — these  Av^ere  the 
condition  of  my  birth — the  wholesome  soil  which  I  was 
planted  in.  Yet,  without  impeachment  to  their  tendere.st 
lessons,  I  am  not  sorry  to  have  had  glances  of  something 
beyond,  and  to  have  taken,  if  but  a  peeji,  in  childliood,  at 
the  contrasting  accidents  of  a  great  fortune. 

To  have  the  feeling  of  gentility,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
have  been  born  gentle.  The  pride  of  ancestry  may  be  had 
on  cheaper  terms  than  to  be  obliged  to  an  importmiate 
race  of  ancestors ;  and  the  coatless  antiquary  in  his  un- 
emblazoned  cell,  revolving  the  long  line  of  a  Mowbray's 
or  Do  Clifford's  pedigree,  at  those  somiding  names  may 
warm  himself  into  as  gay  a  vanity  as  those  who  do  inherit 
them.  The  claims  of  birth  are  ideal  merely,  and  what 
herald  shall  go  about  to  strip  me  of  an  idea  ?  Is  it  tren- 
chant to  their  swords  ?  can  it  be  hacked  off  as  a  spm*  can  1 
or  torn  away  like  a  tarnished  garter  ? 

What,  else,  were  the  families  of  the  great  to  us  1  what 
pleasure  should  we  take  in  their  tedious  genealogies,  or 
their  capitulatory  brass  monuments  1  What  to  us  the 
uninterrupted  current  of  their  bloods,  if  oiu-  own  did  not 
answer  within  us  to  a  cognate  and  corresponding  ele- 
vation 1 

Or  wherefore,  else,  0  tattered  and  diminished  'Scut- 
cheon that  hung  upon  the  time-worn  walls  of  thy  princely 
stairs,  Blakesmoor  !  have  I  in  childhood  so  oft  stood 
poring  upon  thy  mystic  characters — thy  embhnnatic  sup- 
porters, with  their  prophetic  "Resurgam" — till,  every 
dreg  of  peasantry  purging  off,  I  received  into  myself  Very 
Gentility  1  Thou  wert  first  in  my  morning  eyes  ;  and  of 
nights  hast  detained  my  steps  from  bedward,  till  it  was 
but  a  step  from  gazing  at  thee  to  dreaming  on  thee. 

^  [Marvell,  on  Appletou  House,  to  the  Lord  Fairfax.] 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE.  209 

This  is  the  only  true  gentry  by  adoption  ;  the  veritable 
change  of  blood,  and  not  as  empirics  have  fabled,  by 
transfusion. 

AVho  it  was  by  dying  that  had  earned  the  splendid 
trophy,  I  know  not,  I  inquired  not ;  but  its  fading  rags, 
and  coloiu's  cobwel|,-stained,  told  that  its  subject  was  of 
two  centuries  back. 

And  what  if  my  ancestor  at  that  date  was  some 
Damoetas, — feeding  flocks,  not  his  own,  upon  the  hills  of 
Lincoln — did  I  in  less  earnest  vindicate  to  myself  the 
family  trappings  of  this  once  proud  ^Egon  ?  repaying  by 
a  backward  triumph  the  insidts  he  might  possibly  have 
heaped  in  his  life-time  upon  my  poor  pastoral  progenitor. 

If  it  were  presumption  so  to  speculate,  the  present 
owners  of  the  mansion  had  least  reason  to  complain. 
They  had  long  forsaken  the  old  house  of  their-  fathers  for 
a  newer  trifle  ;  and  I  was  left  to  appropriate  to  myself 
what  images  I  could  pick  up,  to  raise  my  fancy,  or  to 
soothe  my  vanity. 

I  was  the  true  descendant  of  those  old  W s,  and 

not  the  present  family  of  that  name,  who  had  fled  the 
old  waste  places. 

]\Iine  was  that  gallery  of  good  old  family  portraits, 
which  as  I  have  gone  over,  giving  them  in  ftincy  my  own 
family  name,  one — and  then  another — would  seem  to 
smile,  reaching  forward  from  the  canvas,  to  recognise  the 
new  relationship ;  while  the  rest  looked  grave,  as  it 
seemed,  at  the  vacancy  in  their  dwelling,  and  thoughts  of 
fled  posterity. 

The  Beauty  with  the  cool  blue  pastoral  drapery,  and  a 
lamb — that  hung  next  the  great  bay  window — with  the 

bright  yellow  H shire  hair,  and  eye  of  watchet  hue — 

so  like  my  Alice  ! — I  am  persuaded  she  was  a  tnie  Elia — 
Mildred  Elia,  I  take  it. 

Mine,  too,  Blakesmook,  was  thy  noble  J\Iarble  Hall, 

with  its  mosaic  pavements,  and  its  Twelve  Cassars — stately 

busts  in  mar1:)le — ranged  round  ;  of  whose  countenances, 

young  reader  of  faces  as  I  was,  the  frowning  beauty  of 

P 


210  TUK   ESSAYS  OK  KIJA. 

Nero,  I  rciiu'iuhcr,  IkkI  most  of  my  "wonder  ;  lait  the  mild 
Galba  li;id  my  love.  There  they  stood  in  the  coldness  of 
death,  yet  freshness  of  immortality. 

Mine,  too,  thy  lofty  Justice  Hall,  with  its  one  chair 
of  authority,  higli-backed  and  wickered,  once  the  terror 
of  luckless  poacher,  or  self-forgetful  niaiden — so  common 
since,  that  bats  have  roosted  in  it. 

Mine,  too, — whose  else  1 — thy  costly  fruit-garden,  with 
its  sun-baked  southern  wall ;  the  ampler  pleasure-garden, 
rising  backwards  from  the  house  in  triple  terraces,  with 
flower-pots  now  of  palest  lead,  save  that  a  speck  here  and 
there,  saved  from  the  elements,  bespake  their  pristine  state 
to  have  been  gilt  and  glittering ;  the  verdant  quarters 
backwarder  still ;  and,  stretching  still  beyond,  in  old  for- 
mality, thy  firry  wilderness,  the  haimt  of  the  squirrel,  and 
the  day-long  murmuring  wood-pigeon,  with  that  antique 
image  in  the  centre,  God  or  Goddess  I  wist  not ;  but  child 
of  Athens  or  old  Rome  paid  never  a  sincerer  worship  to 
Pan  or  to  Sylvanus  in  their  native  groves,  than  I  to  that 
fragmental  mystery. 

Was  it  for  this,  that  I  kissed  my  childish  hands  too 
fervently  in  yoiir  idol -worship,  walks  and  windings  of 
Blakesmooe  !  for  this,  or  what  sin  of  mine,  has  the 
plough  passed  over  your  pleasant  places?  I  sometimes 
think  tliat  as  men,  when  they  die,  do  not  die  all,  so  of 
their  extinguished  habitations  there  may  be  a  hope — a 
germ  to  be  revivified. 


POOR  RELATIONS. 

A  Poor  Relation — is  the  most  irrelevant  thing  in  nature, 
— a  piece  of  impertinent  correspondency, — an  odious  aj)- 
])roximation, — a  haunting  conscience, — a  i^reposterous 
sliadow,  lengthening  in  the  noon-tide  of  our  prosperity, — 
an  unwelcome  remembrancer, — a  perpetually  recurring 
mortification, — a  drain  on  your  curse, — a  more  intoler- 


rOOR  RELATIONS.  211 

able  (lull  upon  your  pride, — a  drawback  u})on  success, — 
a  rebuke  to  yoiu:  rising, — a  stain  in  your  blood, — a  blot 
on  your  'scutcheon, — a  rent  in  your  garment, — a  death's 
head  at  youi-  banquet, — Agathocles'  pot, — a  IMordecai  in 
joxir  gate, — a  Lazarus  at  your  door, — a  lion  in  yoiu*  path, 
— a  frog  in  yovu*  chamlier, — a  fly  in  yoiu-  ointment,— a 
mote  in  yom*  eye, — a  triumph  to  yom-  enemy, — an  apology 
to  your  friends, — the  one  thing  not  needful, — the  hail  in 
harvest, — the  ounce  of  sour  in  a  pound  of  sweet. 

He  is  known  by  his  knock.     Your  heart  telleth  you 

"That  is  Mr." ."      A  rap,  between  familiarity  and 

resi^ect;  that  demands,  and  at  the  same  time  seems  to 
despair  of,  entertainment.  He  entereth  smiling  and — 
embarrassed.  He  holdeth  out  his  hand  to  you  to  shake, 
and — draweth  it  back  again.  He  casually  looketh  in 
about  dinner-time — when  the  table  is  fidl.  He  offereth 
to  go  away,  seeing  you  have  company — but  is  induced  to 
stay.  He  fiUeth  a  chair,  and  yom*  visitor's  two  children 
are  accommodated  at  a  side-table.  He  never  cometh  upon 
open  days,  when  your  wife  says,  with  some  complacency, 

"  My  dear,  perhaps  Mr.  • will  cbop  in  to-day."     He 

remembereth  birth-days — and  jirofesseth  he  is  fortunate 
to  have  stumbled  upon  one.  He  declareth  against  fish, 
the  tm'bot  being  small — yet  suftereth  himself  to  be  im- 
portuned into  a  slice,  against  his  fii'st  resolution.  He 
sticketli  l)y  the  port — yet  will  be  prevailed  upon  to  empty 
the  remainder  glass  of  claret,  if  a  stranger  press  it  upon 
him.  He  is  a  puzzle  to  the  servants,  who  are  fearful  of 
being  too  obsequious,  or  not  civil  enough,  to  him.  The 
guests  think  "  they  have  seen  him  before."  Every  one 
specidateth  upon  his  condition ;  and  the  most  part  take 
him  to  be  a — tide-waiter.  He  calleth  you  by  your  Chris- 
tian name,  to  imply  tliat  his  other  is  the  same  "v\dth  your 
own.  He  is  too  familiar  by  half,  yet  you  wish  he  had 
less  diffidence.  AVith  half  tlie  fomiliarity,  he  miglit  pass 
for  a  casual  dependant ;  with  more  bokbiess,  he  would  be 
in  no  danger  of  being  taken  for  what  he  is.  He  is  too 
humble  for  a  friend  ;  yet  taketh  on  him  more  state  than 


212  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

befits  a  client.  He  is  a  worse  guest  than  a  country 
tenant,  inasmuch  as  he  bringeth  iip  no  rent — yet  'tis  odds, 
from  his  garb  and  demeanom-,  that  your  guests  take  him 
for  one.  He  is  asked  to  make  one  at  the  whist  table ; 
refuseth  on  the  score  of  j^overty,  and — resents  being  left 
out.  When  the  company  break  up,  he  proffereth  to  go 
for  a  coach — and  lets  the  servant  go.  He  recollects  yoiu" 
grandfather ;  and  -wall  thrust  in  some  mean  and  cpiite  im- 
important  anecdote — of  the  family.  He  knew  it  when  it 
was  not  quite  so  ilourishing  as  "  he  is  blest  in  seeing  it 
now."  He  reviveth  past  situations,  to  institute  what  he 
calleth — ftivourable  comparisons.  With  a  reflecting  sort 
of  congratulation,  he  will  inquire  the  price  of  your  furni- 
ture :  and  insults  you  with  a  special  commendation  of 
your  Avindow-curtains.  He  is  of  opinion  that  the  urn  is 
the  more  elegant  shape ;  but,  after  all,  there  was  some- 
thing more  comfortable  about  the  old  tea-kettle — which 
you  must  rememl^er.  He  dare  say  you  must  find  a  great 
convenience  in  having  a  carriage  of  your  own,  and 
appealeth  to  your  lady  if  it  is  not  so.  Inquircth  if  you 
have  had  your  arms  done  on  vellum  yet  •  and  did  not 
know,  till  lately,  that  such-and-such  had  been  the  crest 
of  the  family.  His  memory  is  unseasonable ;  his  com- 
pliments perverse ;  his  talk  a  trouble  ;  his  stay  pertina- 
cious ;  and  when  he  goeth  away,  you  dismiss  his  chair 
into  a  corner  as  precipitately  as  possible,  and  feel  fairly 
rid  of  two  nuisances. 

There  is  a  worse  evil  under  the  sun,  and  that  is — a 
female  Poor  Relation.  You  may  do  something  with  the 
other ;  you  may  pass  him  off"  toleral)ly  well ;  but  your 
indigent  she-relative  is  hopeless.  "  He  is  an  old  hmnor- 
ist,"  you  may  say,  "  and  aff"ects  to  go  threadbare.  His 
circumstances  are  better  than  folks  would  take  them  to 
be.  You  are  fond  of  having  a  Character  at  yoiu-  table, 
and  truly  he  is  one."  But  in  the  indications  of  female 
poverty  there  can  be  no  disguise.  No  woman  dresses  be- 
low herself  from  cajjrice.  The  tnith  must  out  without 
shuSliug.      "  She  is  plainly  related  to  the  L 's ;  or 


POOR  RELATIONS.  213 

what  does  she  at  their  house  1"  She  is,  in  all  probability, 
yoiir  wife's  cousin.  Nine  times  out  of  ten,  at  least,  this 
is  the  case. — Her  garb  is  something  between  a  gentle- 
woman and  a  beggar,  yet  the  former  evidently  predomi- 
nates. She  is  most  provokingly  humble,  and  ostentatiously 
sensible  to  her  inferiority.  He  may  require  to  be  re- 
l^ressed  sometimes, ^alicptando  snfflammandus  erat — but 
there  is  no  raising  her.     You  send  her  soup  at  dinner, 

and  she  begs  to  be  helped — after  the  gentlemen.    ]\Ir. 

requests  the  honour  of  taking  wine  with  her ;  she  hesitates 
between  Port  and  Madeira,  and  chooses  the  former — 
because  he  docs.  She  calls  the  servant  *SVr  /  and  insists 
on  not  troubling  him  to  hold  her  plate.  The  housekeeper 
patronises  her.  The  children's  governess  takes  ujjou  her 
to  correct  her,  when  she  has  mistaken  the  piano  for  a 
harpsichord. 

Richard  Amlet,  Esq.,  in  the  play,  Ls  a  notable  instance 
of  the  disadvantages  to  which  this  chimerical  notion  of 
affinity  constituting  a  claim  to  acquaintance,  may  subject 
the  spirit  of  a  gentleman.  A  little  foolish  blood  is  all 
that  is  betwixt  him  and  a  lady  with  a  great  estate.  His 
stars  are  peiiictually  crossed  by  the  malignant  maternity 
of  an  old  woman,  who  pereists  in  calling  him  "her  son 
Dick."  But  she  has  wherewithal  in  the  end  to  recom- 
pense his  indignities,  and  float  him  again  upon  the  bril- 
liant sm-face,  under  which  it  had  been  her  seeming 
business  and  pleasm-e  all  along  to  sink  him.  All  men, 
liesides,  are  not  of  Dick's  temperament.  I  knew  an 
Amlet  in  real  life,  who,  wanting  Dick's  buoyancy,  sank 

indeed.     Poor  W was  of  my  own  standing  at  Christ's, 

a  fine  classic,  and  a  youth  of  promise.  If  he  had  a 
blemish,  it  was  too  much  pride  ;  but  its  quality  was  iu- 
oftensive ;  it  was  not  of  that  sort  which  hardens  the 
heart,  and  senses  to  keep  inferiors  at  a  distance ;  it  only 
sought  to  ward  off"  derogation  from  itself.  It  was  the 
principle  of  self-respect  carried  as  far  as  it  could  go,  \dt\\- 
out  infringing  upon  that  respect,  which  he  would  have 
every  one  else  equally  maintain  for  himself.      He  would 


214  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

have  you  to  think  ulikc  with  hiin  on  this  topic.  Many  a 
quarrel  have  I  had  with  him,  when  we  were  rather  older 
boys,  and  oiu-  tallness  made  us  more  obnoxious  to  observa- 
tion in  the  blue  clothes,  because  I  would  not  thread  the 
alleys  and  blind  ways  of  the  town  with  him  to  elude 
notice,  when  we  have  been  out  together  on  a  holiday  in 

the  streets  of  this  sneering  and  prying  metropolis.   W 

went,  sore  with  these  notions,  to  Oxford,  where  the 
dignity  and  sweetness  of  a  scholar's  life,  meeting  with  the 
alloy  of  a  humble  introduction,  wrought  in  him  a  passion- 
ate devotion  to  the  place,  with  a  profound  aversion  from 
the  society.  The  servitor's  gown  (worse  than  his  school 
array)  clung  to  him  with  Nessian  venom.  He  thought 
himself  ridiculous  in  a  garb,  under  which  Latimer  must 
have  walked  erect,  and  in  which  Hooker,  in  his  young  days, 
possibly  flaunted  in  a  vein  of  no  discommendable  vanity. 
In  tlie  depth  of  college  shades,  or  in  his  lonely  chamber, 
the  poor  student  shrunk  from  observation.  He  found 
shelter  among  books,  which  insult  not ;  and  studies,  that 
ask  no  questions  of  a  youth's  finances.  He  was  lord  of 
his  library,  and  seldom  cared  for  looking  out  beyond  his 
domains.  The  healing  influence  of  studious  pursuits  was 
upon  him  to  soothe  and  to  abstract.  He  was  almost  a 
healthy  man,  when  the  waywardness  of  his  fate  broke  out 
against  him  with  a  second  and  worse  malignity.  The 
fixther  of  W had  hitherto  exercised  the  humble  pro- 
fession of  house-painter,  at  N ,  near  Oxford.  A  sup- 
posed interest  with  some  of  the  heads  of  colleges  had  now 
induced  him  to  take  up  his  abode  in  that  city,  with  the 
hope  of  being  employed  upon  some  public  works  which 
were  talked  of.  From  that  moment  I  read  in  the  counte- 
nance of  the  young  man  tlie  determination  which  at  length 
tore  him  from  academical  piu'suits  for  ever.  To  a  person 
imacquainted  with  oiu'  universities,  the  distance  between 
tlie  gownsmen  and  the  townsmen,  as  they  are  called — the 
trading  part  of  the  latter  especially — is  carried  to  an  ex- 
cess that  would  appear  harsh  and  incredible.  The  tem- 
perament of  W 's  father  was  diametrically  the  reverse 


rOOR  RELATIONS.  215 

of  his  own.     Old  W was  a  little,  busy,  cringing 

tradesman,  who,  with  his  son  upon  his  arm,  would  stand 
bowing  and  scraping,  cap  in  hand,  to  anything  that  wore 
the  semblance  of  a  gown — insensible  to  the  winks  and 
opener  remonstrances  of  the  young  man,  to  whose  chamber- 
fellow,  or  equal  in  standing,  perhaps,  he  Avas  thus  obse- 
quiously and  gratuitously  ducking.     Such  a  state  of  things 

coidd  not  last.     W must  change  the  air  of  Oxford, 

or  be  suffocated.  He  chose  the  former ;  and  let  the 
sturdy  moralist,  who  strains  the  point  of  the  filial  duties 
as  high  as  they  can  bear,  censiu-e  the  dereliction ;  he  can- 
not estimate  the  struggle.     I  stood  with  W ,  the  last 

afternoon  I  ever  saw  him,  under  the  eaves  of  his  paternal 
dwelling.     It  was  in  the  fine  lane  leading  from  the  High 

Street  to  the  back  of  *  *  *  *  college,  where  W- kept 

his  rooms.  He  seemed  thoughtful  and  more  reconciled. 
I  ventured  to  rally  him — finding  him  in  a  better  mood — 
upon  a  representation  of  the  Artist  Evangelist,  which  the 
old  man,  whose  affairs  were  beginning  to  floiuish,  had 
caused  to  be  set  up  in  a  splendid  sort  of  frame  over  his 
really  handsome  shop,  either  as  a  token  of  prosperity  or 

badge  of  gratitude  to  his  saint.     W looked  up  at 

the  Luke,  and,  like  Satan,  "  knew  his  mounted  sign — 
and  fled."  A  letter  on  his  father's  table,  the  next  morn- 
ing, announced  that  he  had  accepted  a  commission  in  a 
regiment  about  to  embark  for  Portugal.  He  was  among 
the  fii-st  who  perished  before  the  walls  of  St.  Sebastian. 

I  do  not  know  how,  upon  a  subject  which  I  began  with 
treating  half  seriously,  I  shoidd  have  fallen  upon  a  recital 
so  eminently  painful ;  but  this  theme  of  poor  relationship 
is  replete  with  so  much  matter  for  tragic  as  well  as  comic 
associations,  that  it  is  difficult  to  keep  the  accoiint  dis- 
tinct without  blending.  The  earliest  impressions  which 
I  received  on  this  matter  are  certainly  not  attended  with 
anything  painful,  or  very  humiliating,  in  the  recalling. 
At  my  father's  table  (no  very  splendid  one)  was  to  be 
found,  every  Saturday,  the  mysterious  figure  of  an  aged 
gentleman,  clothed  in  neat  black,  of  a  sad  yet  comely 


216  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

appearance.  His  deportment  was  of  the  essence  of 
gravity ;  his  words  few  or  none ;  and  I  was  not  to  make 
a  noise  in  his  presence.  I  had  little  inclination  to  have 
done  so — for  my  cue  was  to  admire  in  silence.  A  par- 
ticidar  elbow-chair  was  approjoriated  to  him,  which  was  in 
no  case  to  be  violated.  A  peculiar  sort  of  sweet  pudding, 
which  appeared  on  no  other  occasion,  distinguished  the 
days  of  his  coming.  I  used  to  think  him  a  prodigiously 
rich  man.  All  I  coidd  make  out  of  him  was,  that  he 
and  my  father  had  been  schoolfellows,  a  world  ago,  at 
Lincoln,  and  that  he  came  from  the  Mint.  The  Mint  I 
knew  to  be  a  place  where  all  the  money  was  coined^ — and 
I  thought  he  was  the  owner  of  all  that  money.  Awful 
ideas  of  the  Tower  twined  themselves  about  his  presence. 
He  seemed  above  human  infirmities  and  jDassions.  A 
sort  of  melancholy  grandeur  invested  him.  From  some 
inex2)lical)lc  doom  I  fancied  him  obliged  to  go  about  in 
an  eternal  suit  of  mourning ;  a  captive — a  stately  being 
let  out  of  the  Tower  on  Saturdays.  Often  have  I 
wondered  at  the  temerity  of  my  father,  avIio,  in  spite  of 
an  habitual  general  respect  wliich  we  all  in  common 
manifested  towards  him,  would  venture  now  and  then  to 
stand  up  against  him  in  some  argument  touching  their 
youthful  days.  The  houses  of  the  ancient  city  of  Lincoln 
are  divided  (as  most  of  my  readers  know)  between  the 
dwellers  on  the  hill  and  in  the  valley.  This  marked 
distinction  formed  an  obvious  division  between  the  boys 
who  lived  above  (however  brought  together  in  a  common 
school)  and  the  boys  whose  paternal  residence  was  on  the 
plain  ;  a  sufficient  cause  of  hostility  in  the  code  of  these 
young  Grotiuses.  My  fatlier  had  been  a  leading  Moun- 
taineer ;  and  would  still  maintain  the  general  superiority 
in  skill  and  hardihood  of  the  Above  Boys  (his  own 
faction)  over  the  Bdoio  Boys  (so  were  they  called),  of 
which  party  his  contemporary  had  been  a  chieftain. 
Many  and  hot  were  the  skirmishes  on  this  topic — the 
only  one  upon  wliicli  tlie  old  gentleman  was  ever  brought 
out — and  bad  blood  bred ;  even  sometimes  almost  to  the 


POOR  RELATIONS.  217 

recommencement  (so  I  expected)  of  actual  hostilities. 
But  my  father,  who  scorned  to  insist  upon  advantages, 
generally  contrived  to  tmni  the  conversation  upon  some 
adroit  by -commendation  of  the  old  Minster;  in  the 
general  preference  of  which,  before  all  other  cathedrals  in 
the  island,  the  dweller  on  the  hill,  and  the  plain-born, 
could  meet  on  a  conciliating  level,  and  lay  down  their 
less  important  difterences.  Once  only  I  saw  the  old 
gentleman  really  ruffled,  and  I  remember  \vith  anguish 
the  thought  that  came  over  me  :  "  Perhaps  he  will  never 
come  here  again."  He  had  been  pressed  to  take  another 
plate  of  the  viand,  which  I  have  already  mentioned  as 
the  indispensable  concomitant  of  his  visits.  He  had 
refused  with  a  resistance  amounting  to  rigour,  when  my 
aunt,  an  old  Lincolniau,  but  who  had  something  of  this, 
in  common  with  my  cousin  Bridget,  that  she  would 
sometimes  press  civility  out  of  season — uttered  the 
following  memorable  application — ^."Do  take  another 
slice,  Mr.  Billet,  for  you  do  not  get  pudding  every  day." 
The  old  gentleman  said  nothing  at  the  time — but  he  took 
occasion  in  the  com-se  of  the  evening,  when  some  argu- 
ment had  intervened  between  them,  to  utter  with  an 
emphasis  which  chilled  the  company,  and  which  chills 
me  now  as  I  write  it — "Woman,  you  are  superannuated ! " 
John  Billet  did  not  smwive  long,  after  the  digesting  of 
this  affront ;  but  he  survived  long  enough  to  assure  me 
that  peace  was  actually  restored  !  and  if  I  remember 
aright,  another  pudding  was  discreetly  substituted  in  the 
place  of  that  which  had  occasioned  the  offence.  He 
died  at  the  Mint  (anno  1781)  where  he  had  long  held, 
what  he  accounted,  a  comfortable  independence ;  and 
with  five  pounds,  fourteen  shillings,  and  a  penny,  which 
were  found  in  his  escritoir  after  his  decease,  left  the 
world,  blessing  God  that  he  had  enough  to  bury  him, 
and  that  he  had  never  been  obliged  to  any  man  fir  a 
sixpence.     This  was — a  Poor  Relation. 


218  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND 
READING. 

To  mind  the  inside  of  a  Look  is  to  entertain  one's  self  with  the 
forced  product  of  anotlier  man's  brain.  Now  I  think  a  man  of 
quality  and  breeding  may  be  much  amused  with  the  natural  sprouts 
of  liis  own. — Lord  Fopinnyton,  in  "  The  Relapse." 

An  ingenious  acquaintance  of  my  own  was  so  much 
struck  with  this  bright  sally  of  his  Lordshij),  that  he  has 
left  off  reading  altogether,  to  the  great  improvement  of 
his  originality.  At  the  hazard  of  losing  some  credit  on 
this  head,  I  must  confess  that  I  dedicate  no  inconsider- 
able jDortion  of  my  time  to  other  people's  thoughts.  I 
dream  away  my  life  in  others'  speculations.  I  love  to 
lose  myself  in  other  men's  minds.  When  I  am  not 
walking,  I  am  reading ;  I  cannot  sit  and  think.  Books 
think  for  me. 

I  have  no  repugnances.  Shaftesbmy  is  not  too 
genteel  for  me,  nor  Jonathan  Wild  too  low.  I  can  read 
anything  which  I  call  a  hook.  There  are  things  in  that 
shape  which  I  cannot  allow  for  such. 

In  this  catalogue  of  hoohs  tvhich  are  no  books — hiblia 
a-bihlia — I  reckon  Court  Calendars,  Directories,  Pocket 
Books,  Draught  Boards,  bound  and  lettered  on  the  back. 
Scientific  Treatises,  Almanacs,  Statutes  at  Large :  the 
works  of  Hume,  Gibbon,  Robertson,  Beattie,  Soame 
Jenyns,  and  generally,  all  those  volumes  which  "no 
gentleman's  library  shoidd  be  without:"  the  Histories 
of  Flavins  Joscphus  (tliat  learned  Jew),  and  Paley's 
Moral  Philosophy.  With  these  excojitions,  I  can  read 
almost  anything.  I  bless  my  stars  for  a  taste  so  catholic, 
so  unexcluding. 

I  confess  that  it  moves  my  spleen  to  see  these  tlmuja 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  REiU)ING.     219 

in  books'  clothing  perched  upon  shelves,  like  false  saints, 
usurpers-  of  true  shrines,  intruders  into  the  sanctuary, 
thrusting  out  the  legitimate  occupants.  To  reach  down 
a  well-bound  semblance  of  a  volrune,  and  hope  it  some 
kind-hearted  play -book,  then,  opening  Avhat  "  seem  its 
leaves,"  to  come  bolt  upon  a  withering  Pojnilation  Essay. 
To  expect  a  Steele  or  a  Farquhar,  and  find — Adam 
Smith.  To  view  a  well-arranged  assortment  of  block- 
headed  Encyclopaedias  (Anglicanas  or  Metropolitauas)  set 
out  in  an  an-ay  of  russia,  or  morocco,  when  a  tithe 
of  that  good  leather  would  comfortably  re -clothe  my 
shivering  folios,  woidd  renovate  Paracelsus  himself,  and 
enable  old  Raymund  LiUly  to  look  like  himself  again 
in  the  world.  I  never  see  these  impostors,  but  I  long 
to  strip  them,  to  warm  my  ragged  veterans  in  theu- 
spods. 

To  be  strong-backed  and  neat-boimd  is  the  desideratum 
of  a  volume.  Magnificence  comes  after.  This,  when  it 
can  be  aftbrded,  is  not  to  be  lavished  upon  all  kinds  of 
books  indiscriminately.  I  would  not  dress  a  set  of 
magazines,  for  instance,  in  full  suit.  The  dishabille,  or 
half-binding  (^\dth  russia  backs  ever)  is  our  costume.  A 
Shakspeare  or  a  Mdton  (imless  the  fii'st  editions),  it  were 
mere  foppery  to  irick  out  in  gay  apparel.  The  possession 
of  them  confers  no  distinction.  The  exterior  of  them 
(the  things  themselves  being  so  common),  strange  to  say, 
raises  no  sweet  emotions,  no  tickling  sense  of  property  in 
the  owner.  Thomson's  Seasons,  again,  looks  best  (I 
maintain  it)  a  little  torn  and  dog's-eared.  How  beautifid 
to  a  genuine  lover  of  reading  are  the  sullied  leaves,  and 
woni-out  appearance,  nay,  the  veiy  odom*  (beyond  russia) 
if  we  would  not  forget  kind  feelhigs  in  fastidiousness,  of 
an  old  "  Circidating  Library "  Tom  Jones,  or  Vicar  of 
Wakefield !  How  they  speak  of  the  thousand  thumbs 
that  have  tm-ned  over  their  pages  with  delight  !^ — of  the 
lone  sempstress,  whom  they  may  have  cheered  (millinei-, 
or  hard-working  mantua-maker)  after  her  long  day's 
needle-toil,   running  far  into   midnight,   when   she    has 


220  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

snatched  an  hour,  ill  spared  from  sleep,  to  steeii  her 
cares,  as  in  some  Lethean  cup,  in  spelling  out  their 
enchanting  contents  !  "Who  would  have  them  a  whit  less 
soiled  1  What  better  condition  coidd  we  desire  to  see 
them  in  1 

In  some  respects  the  better  a  book  is,  the  less  it 
demands  from  binding.  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  and 
all  that  class  of  perpetually  self- reproductive  volumes — 
Great  Nature's  Stereotypes — we  see  them  individually 
l)erisli  with  less  regret,  because  we  know  the  copies  of  them 
to  be  "  eterne."  But  where  a  book  is  at  once  both  good 
and  rare — where  the  individual  is  almost  the  species,  and 
when  /kai  perishes. 

We  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  torch 
That  can  its  liglit  relumine, — 

such  a  book,  for  instance,  as  the  Life  of  the  Didce  of 
Newcastle,  1)y  his  Duchess — no  casket  is  rich  enough,  no 
casing  sufficiently  durable,  to  honour  and  keep  safe  such 
a  jewel. 

Not  only  rare  volumes  of  this  description,  which  seem 
hopeless  ever  to  be  reprinted,  Init  old  editions  o{  writers, 
such  as  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  Bishop  Taylor,  Milton  in  his 
prose  works.  Fuller — of  whom  we  have  reprints,  yet  the 
books  themselves,  though  they  go  about,  and  are  talked 
of  here  and  there,  we  know  have  not  endenizened  them- 
selves (nor  possibly  ever  will)  in  the  national  heart,  so  as 
to  become  stock  books — it  is  good  to  possess  these  in 
durable  and  costly  covers.  I  do  not  care  for  a  First  Folio 
of  Shakspeare.  <  [You  cannot  make  a  pe^  book  of  an 
author  whom  everybody  reads.]  I  rather  jirefer  the  com- 
mon editions  of  Rowe  and  Tonson,  without  notes,  and 
with  plates,  which,  being  so  execrably  bad,  serve  as  maps 
or  modest  remembrancers,  to  the  text ;  and,  without  jjre- 
tending  to  any  supposablc  enudation  with  it,  are  so  much 
1  tetter  than  the  Shaksjjeare  gallery  m(/7'rtyMi7.s-,  which  did. 
I  have  a  community  of  feeling  with  my  countrymen  aliout 
his   Plays,  and  I  like  those  editions   of  him  best  which 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING.     221 

have  been  ofteuest  tumbled  about  and  handled. — On  the 
contrary,  I  cannot  read  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  but  in 
Folio.  The  Octavo  editions  are  painful  to  look  at.  I 
have  no  sympathy  with  them.  If  they  were  as  much 
read  as  the  current  editions  of  the  other  poet,  I  should 
prefer  them  in  that  shape  to  the  older  one.  I  do  not 
know  a  more  heartless  sight  than  the  reprint  of  the 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy.  What  need  was  there  of  un- 
earthing the  bones  of  that  fantastic  old  great  man,  to 
expose  them  in  a  Avinding-sheet  of  the  newest  fiishion  to 
modern  censure  1  what  hapless  stationer  could  dream  of 
Bm-ton  ever  becoming  popidar? — The  wretched  Malone 
coidd  not  do  worse,  when  he  bribed  the  sexton  of  Strat- 
ford church  to  let  him  whitewash  the  painted  effigy  of  old 
Shakspeare,  which  stood  there,  in  rude  but  lively  fashion 
depicted,  to  the  very  coloiu:  of  the  cheek,  the  eye,  the  eye- 
brow, hair,  the  veiy  dress  he  used  to  wear — the  only 
authentic  testimony  we  had,  however  imperfect,  of  these 
curious  parts  and  parcels  of  him.      They  covered  him 

over  with  a  coat  of  white  paint.     By ,  if  I  had  been 

a  justice  of  peace  for  Warwickshire,  I  would  have  clapped 
both  commentator  and  sexton  fast  in  the  stocks,  for  a 
pair  of  meddling  sacrilegious  varlets. 

I  think  I  see  them  at  their  work — these  sapient 
trouble-tombs. 

Shall  I  be  thought  fontastical  if  I  confess  that  the 
names  of  some  of  our  poets  sound  sweeter,  and  have  a 
finer  relish  to  the  ear — to  mine,  at  least — than  that  of 
Milton  or  of  Shakspeare  1  It  may  be  that  the  latter  are 
more  staled  and  rung  upon  in  common  discourse.  The 
sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume  in  the  men- 
tion, are,  Kit  Marlowe,  Drayton,  Drummond  of  Hawthorn- 
den,  and  Cowley. 

Much  depends  upon  token  and  ivhere  you  read  a  book. 
In  the  five  or  six  impatient  minutes,  before  the  dinner  is 
quite  ready,  who  would  think  of  taking  up  the  Fairy 
Queen  for  a  stoji-gap  or  a  volume  of  Bishop  Andrewes' 
sermons  ? 


222  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Milton  ulinust  requires  a  .soleuiu  service  of  music  to  be 
played  before  you  enter  upon  him.  But  lie  l)rings  his 
music,  to  which,  who  listens,  had  need  bring  docile 
thoughts,  and  piu-ged  ears. 

Winter  evenings — the  world  shut  out — with  less  of 
ceremony  the  gentle  Shakspeare  enters.  At  such  a  sea- 
son the  Tempest,  or  his  own  Winter's  Tale — 

These  two  poets  you  cannot  avoid  reading  aloud — 
to  yourself,  or  (as  it  chances)  to  some  single  person 
listening.  More  than  one — and  it  degenerates  into  an 
audience. 

Books  of  quick  interest,  that  hui-ry  on  for  incidents, 
are  for  the  eye  to  gUde  over  only.  It  will  not  do  to  read 
them  out.  I  could  never  listen  to  even  the  better  kind 
of  modern  novels  without  extreme  irksomeness. 

A  newspaper,  read  out,  is  intolerable.  In  some  of 
the  Bank  offices  it  is  the  custom  (to  save  so  much  indi- 
vidual time)  for  one  of  the  clerks — who  is  the  best 
scholar — to  commence  upon  the  Times  or  the  Chronicle 
and  recite  its  entire  contents  aloud,  jo/'o  bono  publico. 
With  every  advantage  of  lungs  and  elocution,  the  eft'ect  is 
singidarly  vapid.  In  l^arbers'  shops  and  public-houses  a 
fellow  will  get  up  and  spell  out  a  paragraph,  which  he 
communicates  as  some  discovery.  Another  follows  with 
his  selection.  So  the  entire  jomiial  transpires  at  length 
by  piecemeal.  Seldom- i-eaders  are  slow  readers,  and, 
without  this  expedient,  no  one  in  the  company  woidd 
probably  ever  travel  through  the  contents  of  a  whole 
paper. 

Newspapers  always  excite  curiosity.  No  one  ever  lays 
one  down  without  a  feeling  of  disappointment. 

What  an  eternal  time  that  gentleman  in  black,  at 
Nando's,  keeps  the  paper  !  I  am  sick  of  hearing  the 
waiter  bawling  out  incessantly,  "The  Chronicle  is  in 
hand.  Sir." 

Coming  into  an  inn  at  night — having  ordered  your 
supi)er — what  civn  be  more  delightfid  than  to  find  lying 
in  the  window -seat,  left  there  time  out  of  mind  by  the 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING.     223 

carelessness  of  some  fitnner  guest — two  or  tlii-ec  nuinbcrs 
of  the  old  Town  tind  Country  IMagazinc,  witli  its  amusing 
tete-a-tete  pictures — "  The  Royal  Lover  and  Lady  G— — ;" 
"  The  Melting  Platonic  and  the  old  Beau," — and  such- 
like antiquated  scandal  1  Would  you  exchange  it — at 
that  time,  and  in  that  place — for  a  better  book  ? 

Poor  Tobin,  who  latterly  feU  bHnd,  did  not  regret  it 
so  much  for  the  weightier  kinds  of  reading — the  Paradise 
Lost,  or  Comus,  he  coidd  have  read  to  him — but  he  missed 
the  pleasure  of  sldmming  over  with  his  own  eye  a  maga- 
zine, or  a  light  pamphlet. 

I  should  not  care  to  be  caught  in  the  serious  avenues 
of  some  cathedral  alone,  and  reading  Candide. 

I  do  not  remember  a  more  whimsical  siu'prise  than 
having  been  once  detected — by  a  familiar  damsel — re- 
clined at  my  ease  upon  the  grass,  on  Primrose  Hill  (her 
Cythera)  reading — Pamela.  There  was  nothing  in  the 
book  to  make  a  man  seriously  ashamed  at  the  exposure ; 
but  as  she  seated  herself  down  by  me,  and  seemed  deter- 
mined to  read  in  company,  I  coidd  have  wished  it  had 
lieen — any  other  b(wk.  We  read  on  very  sociably  for 
a  few  pages ;  and,  not  finding  the  author  much  to  her 
taste,  she  got  up,  and — went  away.  Gentle  casuist,  I 
leave  it  to  thee  to  (H)njccture,  whether  the  blush  (for  there 
was  one  between  ns)  was  the  property  of  the  nynij)!!  or 
the  swain  in  this  dilemma.  From  me  you  shall  never 
get  the  secret. 

I  am  not  much  a  frii^nd  to  out-of-doors  reading.  I 
cannot  settle  my  spirits  to  it.  I  knew  a  Unitarian  min- 
ister, who  was  generally  to  be  seen  upon  Snow  Hill  (as 
yet  Skinner's  Street  was  not),  between  the  hours  of  ten 
and  eleven  in  the  morning,  studying  a  vohmie  of  Lardner. 
I  owTi  this  to  have  been  a  strain  of  abstraction  beyond 
my  reach.  I  used  to  admire  how  he  sidled  along,  keej)- 
ing  clear  of  secular  contacts.  An  illiterate  encounter 
with  a  porter's  knot,  or  a  bread  basket,  woidd  have  quickly 
])ut  to  flight  all  the  theology  I  am  master  of,  and  have 
left  me  worse  than  inditi'erent  to  the  five  points. 


224  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

There  is  a  class  of  street  readers,  whom  I  can  never 
contemphitc  without  affection— the  poor  gentry,  who,  not 
having  wherewithal  to  liny  or  hire  a  book,  filch  a  little 
learning  at  the  open  stalls — the  owner,  with  his  hard  eye, 
casting  envious  looks  at  them  all  the  while,  and  thinking 
when  they  will  have  done.  Venturing  tenderly,  page 
after  page,  expecting  every  moment  when  he  shall  inter- 
pose his  interdict,  and  yet  unable  to  deny  themselves  the 

gratification,  they  "  snatch  a  fearful  joy."    Martin  B , 

in  this  way,  by  daily  fragments,  got  through  two  volumes 
of  Clarissa,  when  the  stall -keeper  damped  his  laudable 
ambition,  by  asking  him  (it  was  in  his  younger  days) 
whether  he  meant  to  pm-chase  the  work.  M.  declares, 
that  under  no  circumstance  in  his  life  did  he  ever  pemse 
a  book  with  half  the  satisfaction  which  he  took  in  those 
uneasy  snatches.  A  ciuaiut  poetess  of  our  day  has  moral- 
ised upon  this  subject  in  twoveiy  touching  but  homely 
stanzas  : 

I  saw  a  boy  with  eager  eye 
Open  a  book  upon  a  stall, 
And  read,  as  he'd  devour  it  all  ; 
Which,  when  the  stall-man  did  espy, 
Soon  to  the  boy  I  heard  him  call, 
"  You  Sir,  you  never  buy  a  book, 
Therefore  in  one  you  shall  not  look." 
The  boy  pass'd  slowly  on,  and  with  a  sigh 
He  wlsh'd  he  never  had  been  taught  to  read, 
Then  of  the  old  churl's  books  he  should  have  had  no  need 

Of  sufferings  the  poor  have  many, 

Wliicli  never  can  the  rich  annoy. 

I  soon  perceived  another  boy, 

Wlio  look'd  as  if  he  had  not  any 

Food,  for  that  day  at  least — enjoy 

The  sight  of  cold  meat  in  a  tavern  larder. 

This  boy's  case,  then  thought  I,  is  surely  harder. 

Thus  hungry,  longing,  thus  without  a  penny, 

Beholding  choice  of  dainty-dressed  meat  : 

No  wonder  if  he  wished  he  ne'er  had  learu'd  to  eat. 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  225 


STAGE  ILLUSION. 

A  PLAY  is  said  to  be  well  or  ill  aeterl,  in  proportion  to 
the  scenical  illusion  produced.  Whether  such  illusion  can 
in  any  case  be  perfect,  is  not  the  question.  The  nearest 
approach  to  it,  we  are  told,  is  when  the  actor  appears 
wholly  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  spectators.  In 
tragedy — in  all  which  is  to  aftect  the  feelings — this  undi- 
vided attention  to  his  stage  business  seems  indispensable. 
Yet  it  is,  in  fact,  dispensed  with  every  day  by  oiu"  cleverest 
tragedians ;  and  while  these  references  to  an  audience,  in 
the  shape  of  rant  or  sentiment,  are  not  too  frequent  or 
palpable,  a  sufficient  quantity  of  illusion  for  the  pmposes 
of  dramatic  interest  may  be  said  to  be  produced  in  spite 
of  them.  But,  tragedy  apart,  it  may  be  inquired  whether, 
in  certain  characters  in  comedy,  especially  those  which  are 
a  little  extravagant,  or  which  involve  some  notion  reimg- 
nant  to  the  moral  sense,  it  is  not  a  proof  of  the  highest 
skill  in  the  comedian  when,  -wdthout  absolutely  appealing 
to  an  audience,  he  keeps  np  a  tacit  understanding  with 
them ;  and  makes  them,  unconsciously  to  themselves,  a 
party  in  the  scene.  The  utmost  nicety  is  required  in  the 
mode  of  doing  this ;  but  we  speak  only  of  the  great  artists 
in  the  jirofession. 

The  most  mortifying  infirmity  in  human  nature,  to  feel 
in  om-selves,  or  to  coutemi^late  in  another,  is,  perhaps, 
cowardice.  To  see  a  coward  done  to  the  life  upon  a  stage 
woidd  produce  anything  but  mii'th.  Yet  we  most  of  us 
remember  Jack  Bannister's  cowards.  Could  anything  be 
more  agreeable,  more  pleasant?  We  loved  the  rogues. 
How  was  this  effected  but  by  the  exquisite  art  of  the 
actor  in  a  perpetual  sub-insinuation  to  ns,  the  spectators, 
even  in  the  extremity  of  the  shaking  fit,  tliat  he  was  not 
half  such  a  coward  as  we  took  him  for  ?  We  saw  all  the 
common  symptoms  of  the  malady  upon  him  ;  the  quivering 
Q 


22G  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

lijj,  the  cowering  knees,  the  teeth  chattering ;  and  covikl 
have  sworn  "  that  man  was  frightened."  But  we  forgot 
all  the  while — or  kept  it  almost  a  secret  to  ourselves — 
that  he  never  once  lost  his  self-possession  ;  that  he  let  out, 
by  a  thousand  droll  looks  and  gestiu'es — meant  at  ns,  and 
not  at  all  supposed  to  be  visible  to  his  fellows  in  the 
scene,  that  his  confidence  in  his  own  resources  had  iiever 
once  deserted  him.  Was  this  a  genuine  pictiu'e  of  a 
coward ;  or  not  rather  a  likeness,  which  the  clever  artist 
contrived  to  palm  upon  us  instead  of  an  original ;  while 
we  secretly  connived  at  the  delusion  for  the  pm'pose  of 
greater  pleasure,  than  a  more  genuine  counterfeiting  of  the 
imbecility,  helplessness,  and  utter  self-desertion,  which  we 
know  to  be  concomitants  of  cowardice  in  real  life,  coidd 
have  given  us  1 

Why  are  misers  so  hateful  in  the  world,  and  so  endur- 
able on  the  stage,  but  because  the  skilfid  actor,  by  a  sort 
of  subreference,  rather  than  direct  appeal  to  lis,  disarms 
the  character  of  a  great  deal  of  its  odiousness,  by  seeming 
to  engage  ow  compassion  for  the  insecure  teniu'c  by  which 
he  holds  his  money-bags  and  parchments  1  By  this  subtle 
vent  half  of  the  hatefulness  of  the  character — the  self- 
closeness  with  which  in  real  life  it  coils  itself  up  from  the 
sympathies  of  men — evaporates.  The  miser  becomes 
sympathetic ;  i.e.,  is  no  genuine  miser.  Here  again  a 
diverting  likeness  is  substituted  for  a  very  disagreeable 
reality. 

Spleen,  irritability — the  pitiable  infirmities  of  old  men, 
which  produce  only  pain  to  behold  in  the  realities,  comi- 
terfeited  upon  a  stage,  divert  not  altogether  for  the  comic 
appendages  to  them,  but  in  j^art  from  an  inner  conviction 
that  they  are  beinff  acted  before  us ;  that  a  likeness  only 
is  going  on,  and  not  the  thing  itself  They  please  by 
being  done  under  the  life,  or  beside  it ;  not  to  the  life. 
When  Gattie  acts  an  old  man,  is  he  angry  indeed?  or 
only  a  pleasant  coimterfeit,  just  enough  of  a  likeness  to 
recognise,  without  pressing  upon  us  the  uneasy  sense  of  a 
reality  ? 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  227 

Comecliaus,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  may  be  too 
natural.  It  was  the  case  with  a  late  actor.  Nothing 
could  be  more  earnest  or  tnie  than  the  manner  of  Mr. 
Emery ;  this  told  excellently  in  his  Tyke,  and  characters 
of  a  tragic  cast.  But  when  he  carried  the  same  rigid  ex- 
cliisiveness  of  attention  to  the  stage  business,  and  wilful 
blindness  and  oblinon  of  everything  before  tlie  ciu-tain 
into  his  comedy,  it  jM-oduced  a  harsh  and  dissonant  effect. 
He  was  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  dramatis 
jiersonai.  There  was  as  little  link  between  him  and  them, 
as  betwixt  himself  and  the  aucbence.  He  was  a  third 
estate — dry,  repulsive,  and  unsocial  to  all.  IncUvidually 
considered,  his  execution  was  masterly.  But  comedy  is 
not  this  unbending  thing ;  for  this  reason,  that  the  same 
degree  of  credibility  is  not  required  of  it  as  to  serious 
scenes.  The  degrees  of  credibility  demanded  to  the  two 
things  may  be  illustrated  by  the  (Ufferent  sort  of  tnith 
which  we  expect  when  a  man  tells  us  a  mournful  or  a 
merry  story.  If  we  suspect  the  former  of  falsehood  iu 
any  one  tittle,  we  reject  it  altogether.  Our  tears  refuse 
to  flow  at  a  suspected  imposition.  But  the  teller  of  a 
mirthfid  tale  has  latitude  allowed  him.  We  are  content 
with  less  than  absolute  tmth.  "Tis  the  same  with  dra- 
matic illusion.  We  confess  we  love  in  comedy  to  see  an 
audience  natiu-alised  behind  the  scenes — taken  into  the 
interest  of  the  drama,  welcomed  as  bystanders,  however. 
There  is  something  ungracious  in  a  comic  actor  holding 
himself  aloof  from  all  participation  or  concern  with  those 
who  are  come  to  be  diverted  by  him.  Macbeth  must  see 
the  dagger,  and  no  ear  but  his  own  be  told  of  it ;  but  an 
old  fool  in  farce  may  think  he  sees  something,  and  by  con- 
scious words  and  looks  express  it,  as  plainly  as  he  can 
speak,  to  pit,  box,  and  gallery.  When  an  impertinent  in 
tragedy,  an  Osric,  for  instance,  breaks  in  upon  the  serioits 
passions  of  the  scene,  we  approve  of  the  contempt  with 
which  he  is  treated.  But  when  the  })leasant  impertinent 
of  comedy,  in  a  piece  pm-ely  meant  to  give  delight,  and 
raise   mirth   out  of  whimsical   periDlexities,   worries   the 


228  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

studious  man  with  taking  up  his  leisiu"e,  or  making  his 
house  his  home,  the  same  sort  of  contempt  expressed 
(however  natmxd)  would  destroy  the  bahmce  of  delight 
in  the  spectators.  To  make  the  intrusion  comic,  the  actor 
who  plays  the  annoyed  man  must  a  little  desert  nature ; 
he  must,  in  short,  lie  thinking  of  the  audience,  and  express 
only  so  much  dissatisfaction  and  peevishness  as  is  con- 
sistent with  the  pleasure  of  comedy.  In  other  words,  his 
perplexity  must  seem  half  put  on.  If  he  repel  the  in- 
tnider  with  the  sober  set  face  of  a  man  in  earnest,  and 
more  especially  if  he  deliver  his  expostulations  in  a  tone 
which  in  the  world  must  necessarily  provoke  a  duel,  his 
real -life  manner  will  destroy  the  whimsical  and  purely 
dramatic  existence  of  the  other  character  (which  to  render 
it  comic  demands  an  antagonist  comicality  on  the  part  of 
the  character  opjjosed  to  it),  and  convert  what  was  meant 
for  mirtli,  rather  than  belief,  into  a  downright  piece  of 
impertinence  indeed,  which  would  raise  no  diversion  in 
us,  but  rather  stir  pain,  to  see  inflicted  in  earnest  upon 
any  worthy  jjerson.  A  very  judicious  actor  (in  most  of 
his  parts)  seems  to  have  fallen  into  an  error  of  this  sort 
in  his  playing  with  Mr.  Wrench  in  the  farce  of  Free  and 
Easy. 

Many  instances  would  be  tedious ;  these  may  suffice 
to  show  that  comic  acting  at  least  does  not  always 
demand  from  the  performer  that  strict  abstraction  from 
all  reference  to  an  audience  which  is  exacted  of  it ;  but 
that  in  some  cases  a  sort  of  compromise  may  take  place, 
and  all  the  pmposes  of  dramatic  delight  be  attained  by  a 
judicious  understanding,  not  too  openly  announced,  be- 
tween the  ladies  and  gentlemen — on  both  sides  of  the 
curtain. 


TU  THE  aiiADE  OF  ELLISTON.  229 


TO  THE  SHADE  OF  ELLISTON. 

JoYousEST  of  once  embodied  spiiits,  whither  at  length 
hast  thou  flowTi  1  to  what  genial  region  are  we  permitted 
to  conjecture  that  thou  hast  flitted  1 

Art  thou  sowing  thy  wild  oats  yet  (the  harvest-time 
was  still  to  come  with  thee)  upon  casual  sands  of  Avemus  ? 
or  art  thou  enacting  Rover  (as  we  woidd  gladlier  think) 
by  wandering  Elysian  streams  1 

This  mortal  frame,  while  thou  didst  play  thy  brief 
antics  amongst  us,  was  in  tmth  anything  but  a  prison  to 
thee,  as  the  vain  Platonist  dreams  of  this  bod^  to  be  no 
better  than  a  comity  gaol,  forsooth,  or  some  house  of 
dm-ance  vile,  whereof  the  five  senses  are  the  fetters. 
Thou  knewest  better  than  to  be  in  a  hiu-ry  to  cast  off 
these  gyres ;  and  had  notice  to  quit,  I  fear,  before  thou 
wert  quite  ready  to  abandon  this  fleshy  tenement.  It 
was  thy  Pleasure- House,  thy  Palace  of  Dainty  Devices  : 
thy  Louvre,  or  thy  White-Hall. 

^Miat  new  mysterioiLS  lodgings  dost  thou  tenant  now  1 
or  when  may  we  expect  thy  aerial  house-warmmg  1 

Tartarus  we  know,  and  we  have  read  of  the  Blessed 
Shades ;  now  cannot  I  intelligibly  fancy  thee  in  either. 

Is  it  too  much  to  hazard  a  conjectiu-e,  that  (as  the 
school-men  admitted  a  receptacle  apart  for  Patriarchs  and 
unchrisom  babes)  there  may  exist  —  not  far  perchance 
from  that  store-house  of  all  vanities,  which  Milton  saw  in 
visions, — a  Limbo  somewhere  for  Players  1  and  that 

Up  thither  like  aerial  vapours  fly 

Both  all  Stage  things,  and  all  that  in  Stage  things 

Built  their  fond  hopes  of  glory,  or  lasting  fame  ? 

All  the  imaccomplished  works  of  Authors'  hands, 

Abortive,  monstrous,  or  unkindly  mixed, 

Damn'd  upon  earth,  fleet  thither — 

Play,  Opera,  Farce,  with  all  their  trumpery.  — 


230  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

There,  by  the  neighbouring  moon  (by  some  not  iin- 
properiy  sujjposed  tliy  Regent  Planet  upon  earth),  niayst 
thou  not  still  be  acting  thy  managerial  pranks,  great  dis- 
embodied Lessee  1  but  Lessee  still,  and  still  a  manager. 

In  Green  Rooms,  impervious  to  mortal  eye,  the  nuise 
beholds  thee  wielding  posthumous  emi^ire. 

Tliin  ghosts  of  Figurantes  (never  jjlumj)  on  earth) 
circle  thee  in  endlessly,  and  still  their  song  is  Fie  on  sin- 
ful Phintasy  ! 

Magnificent  were  thy  capriccios  on  this  globe  of  earth, 
Robert  William  Elliston  !  for  as  yet  we  know  not  thy 
WQ^ii  name  in  heaven. 

It  irks  me  to  think,  that,  stript  of  thy  regalities,  thou 
shouldst  ferry  over,  a  poor  forked  shade,  in  crazy  Stygian 
wherry.  Methiuks  I  hear  the  old  boatman,  paddling  liy 
the  weedy  wharf,  with  raucid  voice,  bawling  "  Sculls, 
Sculls  !"  to  which,  with  waving  hand,  and  majijstic 
action,  thou  deignest  no  reply,  other  than  in  two  curt 
monosyllables,  "No:  Oars." 

But  the  laws  of  Pluto's  kingdom  know  small  difference 
between  king  and  cobbler ;  manager  and  call-boy ;  and, 
if  haply  your  dates  of  life  were  conteriniuant,  you  are 
ipiietly  taking  your  passage,  cheek  by  cheek  (0  ignoble 
levelling  of  Death)  with  the  shade  of  some  recently  de- 
parted candle-snuffer. 

But  mercy  !  what  strippings,  what  tearing  off  of  histri- 
onic robes,  and  private  vanities  !  what  denudations  to  the 
bone,  before  the  surly  Ferryman  will  admit  you  to  set  a 
foot  within  his  battered  lighter. 

Crowns,  sceptres ;  shield,  sword,  and  truncheon ;  thy 
own  coronation  robes  (for  thou  hast  brought  the  whole 
property-man's  wardrobe  with  thee,  enough  to  sink  a 
navy) ;  the  judge's  ermine ;  the  coxcomb's  wig;  the  snuff- 
box a  la  Foppington — all  must  overlioard,  he  jiositively 
swears — and  that  Ancient  Mariner  brooks  no  denial ;  for, 
since  the  tiresome  monodrame  of  the  old  Thracian  Harper, 
Charon,  it  is  to  be  believed,  hath  shown  small  taste  for 
theatricals. 


ELLISTONIANA.  231 

Ay,  now  'tis  (lone.  You  arc  ju,st  boat-weight ;  ynra 
et  2nda  anima. 

But,  bless  me,  how  liftle  you  look ! 

So  shall  we  all  look — kings  and  keysars — strijDpcd  for 
the  last  voyage. 

But  the  miu-ky  rogue  pushes  oflf.  Adieu  pleasant,  and 
thrice  i^leasant  shade  !  with  my  i)arting  thanks  for  many 
a  heavy  hour  of  life  lightened  l^y  thy  harmless  extrava- 
ganzas, public  or  domestic. 

Rhadamanthus,  who  tries  the  lighter  causes  below, 
leaving  to  his  two  brethren  the  heavy  calendars — honest 
Rliadamanth,  always  partial  to  players,  weighing  their 
particoloiu'ed  existence  here  upon  earth, — making  account 
of  the  few  foibles,  that  may  have  shaded  thy  real  life,  as 
we  call  it  (though,  substantially,  scarcely  less  a  vapoiu" 
than  thy  idlest  vagaries  upon  the  boards  of  the  Drnry), 
as  but  of  so  many  echoes,  natiiral  re-percussions,  and  re- 
sults to  be  expected  from  the  assumed  extravagancies  of 
thy  secondary  or  mock  life,  nightly  upon  a  stage — after  a 
lenient  castigatiou  with  rods  lighter  than  of  those  Medu- 
sean  ringlets,  but  just  enough  to  "whip  the  offending 
Adam  out  of  thee,"  shall  courteously  dismiss  thee  at  the 
right  hand  gate — the  o.  p.  side  of  Hades — that  conducts 
to  masques  and  merry-makings  in  the  Theatre  Royal  of 
Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO,    ET    VALETO. 


ELLISTONIANA. 

My  acquaintance  with  the  pleasant  creatm-e,  whose  loss 
we  all  deplore,  was  Ijut  slight. 

My  first  introduction  to  E.,  which  afterwards  ripened 
into  an  accjuaintance  a  little  on  this  side  of  intimacy,  was 
over  a  counter  in  the  Leamington  Spa  Library,  then  newly 
entered  upon  by  a  branch  of  his  family.  E.,  whom 
nothing  misbecame — to  auspicate,  I  suppose,  the  filial 


232  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

concern,  and  set  it  ;i-going'  with  a  lustre — was  serving  in 
person  two  damsels  fair,  who  had  come  into  the  shop 
ostensibly  to  inquire  for  some  new  publication,  but  in 
reality  to  have  a  sight  of  the  illustrious  shopman,  hoping 
some  conference.  With  what  an  air  did  he  reach  down 
the  volume,  dispassionately  giving  his  opinion  of  tlie  worth 
of  the  work  in  question,  and  launching  out  into  a  disser- 
tation on  its  comparative  merits  with  those  of  certain 
pidjlications  of  a  similar  stamj),  its  rivals  !  his  enchanted 
customers  feirly  hanging  on  his  lips,  subdued  to  their 
authoritative  sentence.  So  have  I  seen  a  gentleman  in 
comedy  acting  the  shoi^man.  So  Lovelace  sold  his  gloves 
in  King  Street.  I  admired  the  histrionic  art,  by  which 
he  contrived  to  carry  clean  away  every  notion  of  disgi'ace, 
from  the  occupation  he  had  so  generously  subniitted  to ; 
and  from  that  hour  I  judged  him,  with  no  after  repent- 
ance, to  be  a  person  with  whom  it  would  be  a  felicity  to 
be  more  acquainted. 

To  descant  \\\)o\\  his  merits  as  a  Comedian  would  be 
superfluous.  With  his  blended  private  and  professional 
habits  alone  I  have  to  do  ;  that  harmonious  fusion  of  the 
manners  of  the  i)layer  into  those  of  every-day  life,  which 
brought  the  stage  boards  into  streets  and  dining-parlom"s, 
and  kept  up  the  play  when  the  play  was  ended. — "  I  like 
Wrench,"  a  friend  was  saying  to  him  one  day,  "  because 
he  is  the  same  natvu'al,  easy  creatiu-e,  on  the  stage,  that 
he  is  oft'.'"  "  My  case  exactly,"  retorted  EUiston — with 
a  charming  forgetfulness,  that  the  converse  of  a  pro- 
position does  not  always  lead  to  the  same  conclusion — "  I 
am  the  same  person  of  the  stage  that  I  am  on."  The 
inference,  at  first  sight,  seems  identical ;  but  examine  it  a 
little,  and  it  confesses  only,  that  the  one  performer  was 
never,  and  the  other  always,  acting. 

And  in  truth  this  was  the  charm  of  EUiston's  private 
deportment.  You  had  spirited  performance  always  going 
on  before  your  eyes,  with  nothing  to  pay.  As  where  a 
monarch  takes  up  his  Casual  abode  for  the  night,  the 
poorest  hovel  which  he  houom-s  by  his  sleeping  in  it, 


ELLISTONIANA.  233 

becomes  ipm  facto  for  that  time  a  palace ;  so  wlierever 
Elliston  walked,  sate,  or  stood  still,  there  was  the  theatre. 
He  carried  about  with  him  his  pit,  boxes,  and  galleries, 
and  set  up  his  portable  play-house  at  comers  of  streets, 
and  in  the  market-places.  Upon  flintiest  pavements  he 
trod  the  boards  still ;  and  if  his  theme  chanced  to  be 
passionate,  the  green  baize  carjiet  of  tragedy  spontan- 
eously rose  beneath  his  feet.  Now  this  was  hearty,  and 
showed  a  love  for  his  art.  So  Apelles  ahvays  painted — 
in  thought.  So  G.  D.  ahvays  poetises.  I  hate  a  luke- 
warm artist.  I  have  known  actors — and  some  of  them 
of  EULston's  own  stamp — who  shall  have  agreeably  been 
amusing  you  in  the  part  of  a  rake  or  a  coxcomb,  through 
the  two  or  three  hours  of  theu-  dramatic  existence ;  but 
no  sooner  does  the  curtain  fall  with  its  leaden  clatter,  but 
a  spirit  of  lead  seems  to  seize  on  all  their  faculties.  They 
emerge  soiu-,  morose  persons,  intolerable  to  their  families, 
servants,  etc.  Another  shall  have  been  expanding  your 
heart  with  generous  deeds  and  sentiments,  till  it  even 
beats  ■with  yearnings  of  universal  sympathy ;  you  abso- 
lutely long  to  go  home  and  do  some  good  action.  The 
play  seems  tedious,  till  you  can  get  fairly  out  of  the 
house,  and  realise  your  laudable  intentions.  At  length 
the  final  bell  rings,  and  this  cordial  representative  of  all 
that  is  amiable  in  human  breasts  steps  forth — a  miser. 
Elliston  was  more  of  a  piece.  Did  he  jAay  Ranger  ?  and 
did  Ranger  fill  the  general  bosom  of  the  to'wii  with  satis- 
faction ?  why  should  he  not  be  Ranger,  and  diftuse  the 
same  cordial  satisfaction  among  his  private  chx-les  1  with 
his  temperament,  hu  animal  spirits,  his  good  nature,  his 
follies  perchance,  coidd  he  do  better  than  identify  him- 
self Avith  his  impersonation  %  Are  we  to  like  a  pleasant 
rake,  or  coxcomb,  on  the  stage,  and  give  oiu-selves  airs  of 
aversion  for  the  identical  character,  presented  to  us  in 
actual  life  ?  or  what  would  the  lierformer  have  gained  by 
divesting  himself  of  the  impersonation  1  Could  the  man 
Elliston  have  been  essentially  different  from  his  part, 
even  if  he  had  avoided  to  reflect  to  us  studiously,  in 


234  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

private  circles,  tlie  uiry  l)risknes.s,  the  forwardness,  the 
'scai)e-goat  trickeries  of  tlic  prototype  1 

"  But  there  is  something  not  natural  in  this  ever- 
lasting acting  ;  we  want  the  real  man." 

Are  you  quite  sure  that  it  is  not  the  man  himself, 
whom  you  cannot,  or  will  not  see,  under  some  adventitious 
trajipings  which,  nevertheless,  sit  not  at  all  inconsistently 
upon  him  1  What  if  it  is  the  nature  of  some  men  to  be 
highly  artificiaU  The  fault  is  least  reprehensible  in 
placers.  Gibber  was  his  own  Foppington,  with  almost 
as  much  wit  as  Vanbrugh  could  add  to  it. 

"  My  conceit  of  his  person," — -it  is  Ben  Jonson  speak- 
ing of  Lord  Bacon, — "  was  never  increased  towards  him 
by  his  place  or  honfmrs.  But  I  have,  and  do  reverence 
him  for  the  greatness,  that  was  only  proper  to  himself; 
in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever  one  of  the  greatest  men, 
that  had  been  in  many  ages.  In  his  adversity  I  ever 
prayed  that  Heaven  would  give  him  strength  ;  for  great- 
ness he  could  not  want." 

The  fpiality  hei'e  commended  was  scarcely  less  con- 
spicuous in  the  subject  of  these  idle  reminiscences  than  in 
my  Lord  Verulam.  Those  who  have  imagined  that  an 
unexpected  elevation  to  the  direction  of  a  great  London 
Theatre  affected  the  consequence  of  Elliston,  or  at  all 
changed  his  nature,  knew  not  the  essential  greatness  of 
the  man  whom  they  disjjarage.  It  was  my  fortune  to 
encounter  him  near  St.  Dunstan's  Church  (which,  with  its 
punctual  giants,  is  now  no  more  than  dust  and  a  shadow), 
on  thc!  morning  of  his  election  to  that  high  office.  Grasp- 
ing my  hand  with  a  look  of  significance,  he  only  uttered, 
— "Have  you  heard  the  news'?" — then,  with  another  look 
following  up  the  blow,  he  subjoined,  "  I  am  the  future 
manager  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre." — Breathless  as  he  saw 
me,  he  stayed  not  for  congratulation  or  reply,  but  mutely 
stalked  away,  leaving  me  to  chew  upon  his  new-blown 
dignities  at  leisure.  In  fact,  nothing  could  be  said  to  it. 
Expressive  silence  alone  could  muse  his  praise.  This  was 
in  his  great  style. 


ELLISTONIANA.  235 

But  was  he  less  great  (be  witness,  0  ye  powers  of 
Equanimity,  tluit  supjiorted  in  the  ruins  of  Carthage  the 
consular  exile,  and  more  recently  transmuted,  for  a  more 
illustrious  exile,  the  barren  constableship  of  Elba  into  an 
image  of  Imperial  France),  when,  in  melancholy  after- 
years,  again,  much  near  the  same  spot,  I  met  him, 
when  that  sceptre  had  been  wrested  from  his  hand,  and 
his  dominion  was  curtailed  to  the  petty  managership, 
and  part  proprietorship,  of  the  small  01ymi)ic,  his  Elba  ? 
He  still  played  nightly  upon  the  boards  of  Dnuy,  but  in 
parts,  alas  !  allotted  to  him,  not  magnificently  distributed 
by  him.  Waiving  his  great  loss  as  nothing,  and  mag- 
nificently sinking  the  sense  of  fallen  material  grandeur 
in  the  more  liberal  resentment  of  depreciations  done  to 
his  more  lofty  intellectual  pretensions,  "  Have  you  heard  " 
(his  customary  exordiim:i) — "  have  you  heard,"  said  he, 
"how  they  treat  me?  they  put  me  in  comedy."  Thought 
I  —but  his  finger  on  his  lips  forbade  any  verbal  inter- 
ruption —  "  where  coidd  they  have  put  you  better  1 " 
Then,  after  a  pause — "Where  I  formerly  played  Eomeo, 
I  now  play  Mercutio," — and  so  again  he  stalked  away, 
neither  staying,  nor  caring  for,  responses. 

0,  it  was  a  rich  scene, — but  Sir  A C ,  the 

best  of  story-tellers  and  sm-geons,  who  mends  a  lame 
narrative  almost  as  well  as  he  sets  a  fractm-e,  alone  could 
do  justice  to  it, — that  I  was  a  witness  to,  in  the  tarnished 
room  (that  had  once  been  green)  of  that  same  little 
Olympic.  There,  after  his  deposition  from  Imperial 
DiTiry,  he  substituted  a  throne.  That  Olympic  Hill  was 
his  "  highest  heaven ; "  himself  "  Jove  in  his  chair." 
There  he  sat  in  state,  while  before  him,  on  comi)laint  of 
prompter,  was  brought  for  judgment  —  how  shall  I 
describe  her  1 — one  of  those  little  tawdry  things  that  flirt 
at  the  tails  of  choruses — a  probationer  for  the  town,  in 
either  of  its  senses  —  the  pertest  little  drab  —  a  dirty 
fringe  and  appendage  of  the  lamp's  smoke  —  who,  it 
seems,  on  some  disapjirolxition  expressed  by  a  "  highly 
respectable "   audience  —  had  precipitately  quitted   her 


236  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

station  on  the  boards,  and  withdi'awn  her  small  talents 
in  disgust. 

"  And  how  dare  yon,"  said  her  manager, — assuming 
a  censorial  severity,  which  would  have  crushed  the  confi- 
dence of  a  Vestris,  and  disarmed  that  beautiful  Rebel 
herself  of  her  professional  caprices — I  verily  believe,  he 
thought  her  standing  before  him — "how  dare  you,  Madam, 
withdraw  yourself,  without  a  notice,  from  yoiu'  theatrical 
duties  r'  "I  was  hissed.  Sir."  "  And  you  have  the 
presumption  to  decide  upon  the  taste  of  the  town  1"  "I 
don't  know  that.  Sir,  but  I  will  never  stand  to  be  hissed," 
was  the  subjoinder  of  young  Confidence — when  gathering 
up  his  features  into  one  significant  mass  of  wonder,  j^ity,  and 
expostulatory  indignation — in  a  lesson  never  to  have  been 
lost  upon  a  creature  less  forward  than  she  who  stood  before 
him — his  words  were  these  :  "  They  have  hissed  me." 

'Twas  the  identical  argument  ci,  fortiori,  which  the 
son  of  Peleus  uses  to  Lycaon  trembling  under  his  lance, 
to  persuade  him  to  take  his  destiny  with  a  good  grace. 
"  I  too  am  mortal."  And  it  is  to  be  believed  that  in 
both  cases  the  rhetoric  missed  of  its  application,  for  want 
of  a  proper  understanding  with  the  faculties  of  the  re- 
spective recipients. 

"  Quite  an  Opera  pit,"  he  said  to  me,  as  he  was 
eoiu-teously  conducting  me  over  the  benches  of  his  Surrey 
Theatre,  the  last  retreat,  and  recess,  of  his  every-day 
waning  grandeur. 

Those  who  knew  Elliston,  will  know  the  manner  in 
which  he  pronounced  the  latter  sentence  of  the  few  words 
I  am  about  to  record.  One  proud  day  to  me  he  took  his 
roast  mutton  with  us  in  the  Temple,  to  which  I  had 
superadded  a  preliminary  haddock.  After  a  rather  plenti- 
ful partaking  of  the  meagre  banquet,  not  unrefreshed  with 
the  humbler  sort  of  liquors,  I  made  a  sort  of  apology  for 
the  humility  of  the  fare,  observing  that  for  my  own  part 
I  never  ate  but  of  one  dish  at  dinner.  "  I  too  never  eat 
but  one  thing  at  dinner," — was  his  reply — then  after  a 
pause — "reckoning  fish  as  nothing."     The  manner  was 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  237 

all.  It  was  as  if  by  one  peremptory  sentence  he  had 
decreed  the  annihilation  of  all  the  savomy  esculents, 
which  the  pleasant  and  nutritious-food-giving  Ocean  poiu-s 
forth  upon  poor  humans  from  her  watery  bosom.  This 
was  greatness,  tempered  with  considerate  tenderness  to 
the  feelings  of  his  scanty  but  welcoming  entertainer, 

Great  wert  thou  in  thy  life,  Robert  William  Elliston  ! 
and  not  lessened  in  thy  death,  if  report  speak  tiidy,  which 
says  that  thou  didst  direct  that  thy  mortal  remains  shoidd 
repose  imder  no  inscription  but  one  of  pure  Latinity. 
Classical  was  thy  bringing  up  !  and  beautifid  was  the 
feeling  on  thy  last  bed,  which,  connecting  the  man  mth 
the  boy,  took  thee  back  to  thy  latest  exercise  of  imagi- 
nation, to  the  days  when,  imdreaming  of  Theatres  and 
Managerships,  thou  wert  a  scholar,  and  an  early  ripe  one, 
imder  the  roofs  builded  by  the  munificent  and  pious  Colet. 
For  thee  the  Pavdine  Muses  weep.  In  elegies,  that  shall 
silence  this  cnide  prose,  they  shall  celebrate  thy  praise. 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY. 

I  AM  fond  of  passing  my  vacations  (I  believe  I  have  said 
so  before)  at  one  or  other  of  the  Universities.  Next  to 
these  my  choice  woidd  fix  me  at  some  woody  spot,  such 
as  the  neighboiu-hood  of  Henley  affords  in  abundance,  on 
the  banks  of  my  beloved  Thames.  But  somehow  or 
other  my  cousin  contrives  to  wheedle  me,  once  in  three 
or  four  seasons,  to  a  watering-place.  Old  attachments 
cling  to  her  in  spite  of  experience.  We  have  been  didl 
at  Worthing  one  simimer,  didler  at  Brighton  another, 
didlest  at  Eastbourn  a  third,  and  are  at  this  moment 
doing  dreary  penance  at — Hastings  ! — and  all  because  we 
were  happy  many  years  ago  for  a  brief  week  at  Margate. 
That  was  om-  first  sea -side  experiment,  and  many  cir- 
cumstances combined  to  make  it  the  most  agreeable 
lioliday  of  my  life.     We  had  neither  of  us  seen  the  sea, 


238  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

aud  we  had  never  been  from  home  so  long  together  in 
company. 

Can  I  f(n'get  thee,  thou  ohl  Margate  Hoy,  witli  thy 
weather-beaten,  sun-burnt  captain,  and  his  rough  accom- 
modations— -ill  exchanged  for  the  foppery  and  fresh-water 
niceness  of  the  modern  steam-packet  1  To  the  winds  and 
waves  thou  committedst  thy  goodly  freightage,  and  didst 
ask  no  aid  of  magic  fumes,  aud  spells,  and  boiling  cal- 
drons. With  the  gales  of  heaven  thou  wentest  swim- 
mingly;  or,  when  it  was  theu-  jjleasure,  stoodest  still 
with  sailor -like  patience.  Thy  course  was  natural,  not 
forced,  as  in  a  hotbed ;  nor  didst  thou  go  poisoning  the 
breath  of  ocean  with  sulphiu-eous  smoke  —  a  great  sea 
chimera,  chimneying  and  furnacing  the  deep  ;  or  liker  to 
that  fire-god  parching  up  Scamander. 

Can  I  forget  thy  honest,  yet  slender  crew,  with  their 
coy  reluctant  responses  (yet  to  the  suppression  of  any- 
thing like  contempt)  to  the  raw  questions,  which  we  of 
the  great  city  would  be  ever  and  anon  putting  to  them, 
as  to  the  uses  of  this  or  that  strange  naval  implement  1 
'Specially  can  I  forget  thee,  thou  happy  medium,  thou 
shade  of  refuge  between  us  and  them,  conciliating  inter- 
preter of  their  skill  to  our  simplicity,  comfortable  ambas- 
sador between  sea  and  land  ! — whose  sailor-trousers  did 
not  more  convincingly  assure  thee  to  be  an  adopted 
denizen  of  the  former,  than  thy  white  cap,  and  whiter 
apron  over  them,  with  thy  neat-fingered  practice  in  thy 
culinary  voca,tion,  bespoke  thee  to  have  been  of  inland 
nurture  heretofore — a  master  cook  of  Eastcheap  ?  How 
busily  didst  thou  ply  thy  midtifarious  occupation,  cook, 
mariner,  attendant,  chamberlain;  here,  there,  like  an- 
other Ariel,  flaming  at  once  about  all  parts  of  the  deck, 
yet  with  kindlier  ministrations — not  to  assist  the  tempest, 
but,  as  if  touched  with  a  kindred  sense  of  our  infirmities, 
to  soothe  the  qualms  which  tliat  imtried  motion  might 
haply  raise  in  our  crude  land -fancies.  And  when  "the 
o'erwashing  billows  drove  us  below  deck  (for  it  was  for 
gone  in  October,  aud  we  had  stitt"  and  blowing  weather), 


THE  OLD  jVLIRGATE  HOY.  239 

how  did  thy  officious  ministerings,  still  catering  for  oiir 
comfort,  with  cards,  and  cordials,  and  thy  more  cordial 
conversation,  alle^aate  the  closeness  and  the  confinement 
of  thy  else  (truth  to  say)  not  very  savoury,  nor  very 
inviting,  little  cabin  ! 

With  these  additaments  to  boot,  we  had  on  board  a 
fellow -passenger,  whose  discourse  in  verity  might  have 
beguiled  a  longer  voyage  than  we  meditated,  and  have 
made  mirth  and  wonder  aboimd  as  far  as  the  Azores. 
He  was  a  dark,  Spanish-complexioned  young  man,  re- 
markably handsome,  with  an  officer-like  assm-auce,  and 
an  iusuppressiljle  volubility  of  assertion.  He  was,  in 
fact,  the  greatest  liar  I  had  met  with  then,  or  since.  He 
was  none  of  yoiu-  hesitating,  half  story-tellers  (a  most 
painfid  description  of  mortals)  who  go  on  sounding  your 
belief,  and  only  giving  you  as  much  as  they  see  you  can 
swallow  at  a  time  —  the  nibbling  pickpockets  of  your 
patience — liut  one  who  committed  downright,  daylight 
depredations  upon  his  neighboui-'s  faith.  He  did  not 
stand  shivering  upon  the  brink,  but  was  a  hearty, 
thorough-paced  liar,  and  plunged  at  once  into  the  depths 
of  your  credidity.  I  partly  believe,  he  made  pretty  siu:e 
of  his  company.  Not  many  rich,  not  many  wise,  or 
learned,  composed  at  that  time  the  common  stowage  of  a 
Margate  packet.  We  were,  I  am  afraid,  a  set  of  as 
imseasoned  Londonei-s  (let  our  enemies  give  it  a  worse 
name)  as  Aldermanbiuy,  or  Watling  Street,  at  that  time 
of  day  could  have  supplied.  There  might  be  an  excep- 
tion or  two  among  us,  but  I  scorn  to  make  any  in^^dious 
distinctions  among  such  a  jolly,  companionable  ship's 
company  as  those  were  whom  I  sailed  with.  Something 
too  must  be  conceded  to  the  Genius  Loci.  Had  the 
confident  fellow  told  us  half  the  legends  on  land  which 
he  favom-ed  us  with  on  the  other  element,  I  flatter  my- 
self the  good  sense  of  most  of  us  woidd  have  revolted. 
But  we  were  in  a  new  world,  with  everything  imfa  miliar 
about  us,  and  the  time  and  place  disposed  us  to  the 
reception  of  any  prodigious  marvel  whatsoever.     Time 


240  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

has  obliterated  from  my  memoiy  much  of  his  wild 
fablings ;  and  the  rest  would  appear  hut  dull,  as  written, 
and  to  be  read  on  shore.  He  had  been  Aide-de-camp 
(among  other  rare  accidents  and  fortunes)  to  a  Persian 
Prince,  and  at  one  blow  had  stricken  off  the  head  of  the 
King  of  Carimania  on  horseback.  He,  of  course,  married 
the  Prince's  daughter.  I  forget  what  unlucky  turn  in 
the  politics  of  that  court,  combining  with  the  loss  of  his 
consort,  was  the  reason  of  his  quitting  Persia ;  but,  with 
the  rapidity  of  a  magician,  he  transported  himself,  along 
with  his  hearers,  back  to  England,  where  we  still  found 
him  in  the  confidence  of  great  ladies.  There  was  some 
story  of  a  princess — Elizabeth,  if  I  remember— ^having 
intrusted  to  his  care  an  extraordinary  casket  of  jewels, 
upon  some  extraordinary  occasion — but,  as  I  am  not 
certain  of  the  name  or  circumstance  at  this  distance  of 
time,  I  must  leave  it  to  the  Royal  daughters  of  England 
to  settle  the  honour  among  themselves  in  private.  I 
cannot  call  to  mind  half  his  pleasant  wonders ;  but  I 
perfectly  remember  that,  in  the  coiu'se  of  his  travels,  he 
had  seen  a  phoenix ;  and  he  obligingly  imdeceived  us  of 
the  vulgar  error,  that  there  is  but  one  of  that  species  at 
a  time,  assuring  us  that  they  were  not  uncommon  in 
some  parts  of  Upper  Egyjjt.  Hitherto  he  had  found  the 
most  implicit  listeners.  His  dreaming  foncies  had  trans- 
ported us  beyond  the  "ignorant  present."  But  when 
(still  hardying  more  and  more  in  his  triumphs  over  oiu- 
simplicity)  he  went  on  to  affirm  that  he  had  actually 
sailed  through  the  legs  of  the  Colossus  at  Rhodes,  it 
really  became  necessary  to  make  a  stand.  And  here  I 
must  do  justice  to  the  good  sense  and  intrepidity  of  one 
of  our  party,  a  youth,  that  had  hitherto  been  one  of  his 
most  deferential  auditors,  who,  from  his  recent  reading, 
made  bold  to  assiu-e  the  gentleman,  that  there  must  be 
some  mistake,  as  "the  Colossus  in  question  had  been 
destroyed  long  since ;"  to  whose  opinion,  delivered  with 
all  modesty,  our  hero  was  obliging  enough  to  concede 
thus  nuich,  that  "the  figure  was  indeed  a  little  damaged." 


THE  OLD  5IARGATE  HOY.  241 

This  was  the  only  opposition  he  met  with,  and  it  did  not 
at  all  seem  to  stagger  hun,  for  he  proceeded  with  his 
fables,  which  the  same  youth  appeared  to  swallow  with 
stiU  more  complacency  than  ever, — confirmed,  as  it  were, 
by  the  extreme  candour  of  that  concession.  With  these 
prodigies  he  wheedled  ns  on  till  we  came  in  sight  of  the 
Reciilvers,  wliich  one  of  our  own  company  (ha\'ing  been 
the  voyage  before)  immediately  recognizing,  and  pointing 
out  to  us,  was  considered  by  us  as  no  ordinary  seaman. 

All  this  time  sat  upon  the  edge  of  the  deck  quite  a 
different  character.  It  was  a  lad,  apparently  very  poor, 
very  infirm,  and  very  patient.  His  eye  was  ever  on  the 
sea,  with  a  smile ;  and,  if  he  caught  now  and  then  some 
snatches  of  these  wild  legends,  it  was  by  accident,  and 
they  seemed  not  to  concern  him.  The  waves  to  him 
whispered  more  iileasant  stories.  He  was  as  one  being 
with  us,  but  not  of  lis.  He  heard  the  bell  of  dinner  ring 
without  stirring ;  and  when  some  of  us  pidled  out  our 
private  stores — our  cold  meat  and  om*  salads — he  pro- 
duced none,  and  seemed  to  want  none.  Only  a  solitary 
biscuit  he  had  laid  in ;  provision  for  the  one  or  two  days 
and  nights,  to  which  these  vessels  then  were  oftentimes 
obliged  to  prolong  their  voyage.  Upon  a  nearer  acquaint- 
ance with  him,  which  he  seemed  neither  to  coiu^  nor 
decline,  we  learned  that  he  was  going  to  Margate,  with 
the  hope  of  being  admitted  into  the  Infirmary  there  for 
sea-bathing.  His  disease  was  a  scrofida,  which  appeared 
to  have  eaten  all  over  him.  He  expressed  great  hopes  of  a 
cm-e  ;  and  when  we  asked  him  whether  he  had  any  friends 
where  he  was  going,  he  replied,  "  he  had  no  friends." 

These  pleasant,  and  some  mom'nfid  passages,  with  the 
first  sight  of  the  sea,  co-operating  with  youth,  and  a 
sense  of  holidays,  and  out-of-door  adventiu-e,  to  me  that 
had  been  pent  up  in  popidous  cities  for  many  months 
before, — have  left  upon  my  mind  the  fragrance  as  of 
siunmer  days  gone  by,  bequeathing  nothing  but  their 
remembrance  for  cold  and  ■ndntry  hours  to  chew  upon. 

Will  it  be  thought  a  digression  (it  may  spare  some 

R 


242  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EI.IA. 

unwelcome  coinijarisons)  if  I  endeavour  to  account  for 
the  dissatisfaction  which  I  have  heard  so  many  persons 
confess  to  have  felt  (as  I  did  myself  feel  in  part  on  this 
occasion),  at  the  sight  of  the  sea  for  the  first  time  ?  I 
think  the  reason  usually  given — referring  to  the  incapa- 
city of  actual  objects  for  satisfying  our  preconceptions  of 
them — scarcely  goes  deep  enough  into  the  question.  Let 
the  same  person  see  a  lion,  an  elephant,  a  mountain  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  and  he  shall  perhaps  feel  himself 
a  little  mortified.  The  things  do  not  fill  up  that  space 
which  the  idea  of  them  seemed  to  take  up  in  his  mind. 
But  they  have  still  a  correspondency  to  his  fii'st  notion, 
and  in  time  grow  up  to  it,  so  as  to  produce  a  very  similar 
impression  :  enlarging  themselves  (if  I  may  say  so)  upon 
familiarity.  But  the  sea  remains  a  disappointment.  Is 
it  not,  that  in  the  latter  we  had  expected  to  behold 
(absurdly,  I  grant,  but,  I  am  afraid,  by  the  law  of 
imagination,  unavoidably)  not  a  definite  object,  as  those 
wild  beasts,  or  that  mountain  compassable  by  the  eye, 
but  all  the  sea  at  once,  the  commensurate  antagonist 
OF  THE  EARTH  1  I  do  iiot  Say  We  tell  ourselves  so  much, 
but  the  craving  of  the  mind  is  to  be  satisfied  with  no- 
thing less.  I  will  suppose  the  case  of  a  young  person  of 
fifteen  (as  I  then  was)  knowing  nothing  of  the  sea,  but 
from  description.  He  comes  to  it  for  the  first  time — all 
that  he  has  been  reading  of  it  all  his  life,  and  t/iat  the 
most  enthusiastic  part  of  life, — all  he  has  gathered  from 
narratives  of  wandering  seamen, — what  he  has  gained 
from  true  voyages,  and  what  he  cherishes  as  credulously 
from  romance  and  poetry, — crowding  their  images,  and 
exacting  strange  tributes  from  expectation. — He  thinks 
of  the  great  deep,  and  of  those  who  go  down  unto  it ;  of 
its  thousand  isles,  and  of  the  vast  continents  it  washes ; 
of  its  receiving  the  mighty  Plata,  or  Orellana,  into  its 
bosom,  without  disturbance,  or  sense  of  augmentation ;  of 
Biscay  swells,  and  the  mariner 

For  many  a  day,  and  many  a  dreadful  night, 
Incessant  labouring  round  the  stormy  Cape  ; 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  243 

of  fatal  rocks,  and  the  "still -vexed  Bermootlies ;"  of 
great  whirlpools,  and  the  water-spout ;  of  sunken  ships, 
and  sumless  treasures  swallowed  up  in  the  unrestoring 
depths  ;  of  fishes  and  quaint  monsters,  to  which  all  that 
is  terrible  on  earth — • 

Be  but  as  buggs  to  frighten  Ijabes  withal, 
Compared  with  the  creatures  in  the  sea's  entral  ; 

of  naked  savages,  and  Juan  Fernandez ;  of  pearls,  and 
shells;  of  coral  beds,  and  of  enchanted  isles;  of  mermaids' 
grots — 

I  do  not  assert  that  in  sober  earnest  he  expects  to  be 
shown  all  these  wonders  at  once,  but  he  is  under  the 
tyi-anny  of  a  mighty  faculty,  which  haunts  him  with  con- 
fused hints  and  shadows  of  all  these  ;  and  when  the  actual 
object  opens  first  upon  him,  seen  (in  tame  weather,  too, 
most  likely)  from  our  unromantic  coasts — a  speck,  a  slip 
of  sea-water,  as  it  shows  to  him — what  can  it  prove  but 
a  very  unsatisfying  and  even  diminutive  entertainment  ? 
Or  if  he  has  come  to  it  from  the  mouth  of  a  river,  was  it 
much  more  than  the  river  widening  1  and,  even  out  of 
sight  of  land,  Avhat  had  he  but  a  flat  watery  horizon  about 
him,  nothing  comparable  to  the  vast  o'er-cmiaining  sky, 
his  familiar  object,  seen  daily  without  dread  or  amaze- 
ment?— Who,  in  similar  circumstances,  has  not  been 
tempted  to  exclaim  with  Charoba,  in  the  poem  of  Gebir, 

Is  this  the  mighty  ocean  ?  is  this  all  ? 

I  love  town  or  country ;  but  this  detestable  Cinque 
Port  is  neither.  I  hate  these  scmbbed  shoots,  thrusting 
out  their  starved  foliage  from  between  the  horrid  fissures 
of  dusty  innutritions  rocks ;  which  the  amateiu-  calls 
"verdure  to  the  edge  of  the  sea."  I  require  woods,  and 
they  show  me  stmitcd  coppices.  I  cry  out  for  the  water- 
brooks,  and  pant  for  fresh  streams,  and  inland  murmurs. 
I  cannot  stand  all  day  on  the  naked  beach,  watching  the 
capricious  hues  of  the  sea,  shifting  like  the  colours  of  a 
dying  mullet.     I  am  tired  of  looking  out  at  the  windows 


244  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

of  this  isliind-prisou.  I  would  fain  retire  into  the  interior 
of  my  cage.  Wliile  I  gaze  upon  the  sea,  I  want  to  be  on 
it,  over  it,  across  it.  It  liinds  nic  in  with  chains,  as  of 
iron.  My  tlioughts  are  abroad.  I  shoidd  not  so  feel  in 
Staffordshire.  There  is  no  home  for  me  here.  There  is 
no  sense  of  home  at  Hastings.  It  is  a  place  of  fugitive 
resort,  an  heterogeneous  assemblage  of  sea-mews  and  stock- 
brokers, Amphitrites  of  the  town,  and  misses  that  coquet 
with  the  Ocean.  If  it  were  what  it  was  in  its  primitive 
shape,  and  what  it  ought  to  have  remained,  a  fair,  honest 
fishing-town,  and  no  more,  it  were  something — with  a  few 
straggling  fishermen's  huts  scattered  about,  artless  as  its 
cliffs,  and  with  their  materials  filched  from  them,  it  were 
something.  I  could  abide  to  dwell  with  Meshech  ;  to 
assort  with  fisher-swains,  and  smugglers.  There  are,  or  I 
dream  there  are,  many  of  this  latter  occupation  here. 
Their  faces  become  the  place.  I  like  a  smuggler.  He  is 
the  only  honest  thief.  He  robs  nothing  but  the  revenue 
— an  abstraction  I  never  greatly  cared  about.  I  could  go 
out  with  them  in  their  mackerel  boats,  or  about  their  less 
ostensible  business,  with  some  satisfaction.  I  can  even 
tolerate  those  poor  \ictims  to  monotony,  who  from  day  to 
day  jjace  along  the  beach,  in  endless  progress  and  recur- 
rence, to  watch  their  illicit  countrymen — townsfolk  or 
brethren,  perchance — whistling  to  the  sheathing  and  un- 
sheathing of  their  cutlasses  (their  only  solace),  who,  under 
the  mild  name  of  preventive  service,  keep  up  a  legitimated 
civil  warfare  in  the  deplorable  absence  of  a  foreign  one, 
to  show  their  detestation  of  run  hoUands,  and  zeal  for  Old 
England.  But  it  is  the  visitants  from  town,  that  come 
here  to  my  that  they  have  been  here,  with  no  more  relish 
of  the  sea  than  a  pond-perch  or  a  dace  might  be  supjiosed 
to  have,  that  are  my  aversion.  I  feel  like  a  foolish  dace 
in  these  regions,  and  have  as  little  toleration  for  myself 
here  as  for  them.  What  can  they  want  here  %  If  they 
had  a  true  relish  of  the  ocean,  why  have  they  brought  all 
this  land  luggage  Avith  them  %  or  why  pitch  their  civilized 
tents  in   the  desert  ?     What  mean  these   scanty  book- 


THE  OLD  I\LVRGATE  HOY.  245 

rooms — marine  libraries  as  they  entitle  tbem — if  the  sea 
were,  as  they  wonld  have  lis  believe,  a  book  "  to  read 
strange  matter  in"?  what  are  their  foolish  concert-rooms, 
if  they  come,  as  they  would  fain  be  thought  to  do,  to 
listen  to  the  music  of  the  waves  1  All  is  false  and  hollow 
pretension.  They  come  because  it  is  the  fashion,  and  to 
sjwil  the  natm-e  of  the  place.  They  are,  mostly,  as  I  have 
said,  stock-brokere ;  but  I  have  watched  the  better  sort 
of  them — now  and  then,  an  honest  citizen  (of  the  old 
stamp),  in  the  simplicity  of  his  heart,  shall  bring  down 
his  wife  and  daughters  to  taste  the  sea  breezes.  I  always 
know  the  date  of  theii*  arrival.  It  is  easy  to  see  it  in 
their  comitenance.  A  day  or  two  they  go  wandering  on 
the  shingles,  picking  up  cockle-shells,  and  thinking  them 
great  things  ;  but,  in  a  poor  week,  imagination  slackens  : 
they  begin  to  discover  that  cockles  produce  no  pearls,  and 
then — 0  then  ! — if  I  coidd  interpret  for  the  pretty  crea- 
tiu-es  (I  know  they  have  not  the  courage  to  confess  it 
themselves),  how  gladly  woidd  they  exchange  their  sea- 
side rambles  for  a  Siuiday  walk  on  the  green  sward  of 
their  accustomed  T^^^ckenham  meadows  ! 

I  woidd  ask  one  of  these  sea-charmed  emigrants,  who 
think  they  tndy  love  the  sea,  with  its  wild  usages,  what 
would  their  feelings  be  if  some  of  the  unsophisticated 
aborigines  of  this  place,  encouraged  by  their  com-teous 
questionings  here,  should  venture,  on  the  faith  of  such 
assured  sympathy  between  them,  to  return  the  visit,  and 
come  up  to  see — London.  I  must  imagine  them  with 
their  fishing-tackle  on  their  back,  as  we  carry  our  town 
necessaries.  What  a  sensation  would  it  cause  in  Loth- 
biu-y  !  Wliat  vehement  laughter  would  it  not  excite 
among 

The  daughters  of  Cheapside,  and  wives  of  Lombard-street  ! 

I  am  sure  that  no  town-bred  or  inland-born  subjects 
can  feel  their  tiiie  and  natm^al  nourishment  at  these  sea- 
places.  Nature,  where  she  does  not  mean  us  for  mariners 
and  vagabonds,   bids  us  stay  at  home.     The  salt  foam 


246  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

seems  to  nourish  a  spleen.  I  am  not  half  so  good-natured 
as  by  the  milder  waters  of  my  natural  river.  I  would 
excliange  these  sea-gulls  for  swans,  and  scud  a  swallow 
for  ever  about  the  banks  of  Thamesis. 


THE  CONVALESCENT. 

A  PRETTY  severe  fit  of  indisjiosition  which,  under  the 
name  of  a  nervous  fever,  has  made  a  prisoner  of  me  for 
some  weeks  past,  and  is  but  slowly  leaving  me,  has  re- 
duced me  to  an  incapacity  of  reflecting  ui)on  any  topic 
foreign  to  itself.  Expect  no  healthy  conclusions  from  me 
this  month,  reader ;  I  can  ofter  you  only  sick  men's 
dreams. 

And  truly  the  whole  state  of  sickness  is  such ;  for 
what  else  is  it  but  a  magnificent  dream  for  a  man  to  lie 
a-bed,  and  draw  daylight  ciu"tains  about  him ;  and,  shut- 
ting out  the  sun,  to  induce  a  total  oblivion  of  all  the 
works  which  are  going  on  under  it  ?  To  become  insen- 
sible to  all  the  operations  of  life,  except  the  beatings  of 
one  feeble  pvdse  ? 

If  there  be  a  regal  solitiule,  it  is  a  sick-bed.  How  the 
patient  lords  it  there ;  Avliat  caprices  he  acts  without  con- 
trol !  how  king-like  he  sways  his  inllow — tumliling,  and 
tossing,  and  shifting,  and  lowering,  and  thumi)ing,  and 
flatting,  and  moulding  it,  to  the  ever-varying  requisitions 
of  his  throbbing  temples. 

He  changes  sides  oftener  than  a  politician.  Now  he 
lies  fidl  length,  then  half  length,  obliquely,  transversely, 
head  and  feet  quite  across  the  bed  ;  and  none  accuses  him 
of  tergiversation.  "Within  the  foui*  cui'taius  he  is  absolute. 
They  are  his  Mare  Clausum. 

How  sickness  enlarges  the  dimensions  of  a  man's  self 
to  himself !  he  is  his  own  exclusive  object.  Supreme  self- 
isliness  is  inculcated  upon  him  as  his  only  duty.  'Tis  tlie 
Two  Tables  of  tlie  Law  to  him.      Ho  has  nothinir  to  think 


THE  CONVALESCENT.  247 

of  but  liow  to  get  well.  Wli;it  passes  out  of  doors,  or 
withiu  thein,  so  he  hear  not  the  jan-ing  of  them,  affects 
him  not. 

A  little  whUe  ago  he  was  greatly  concerned  in  the 
event  of  a  lawsuit,  which  was  to  be  the  making  or  the 
marring  of  his  dearest  friend.  He  was  to  be  seen  trudg- 
ing about  upon  this  man's  errand  to  fifty  quartere  of  the 
town  at  once,  jogging  this  witness,  refreshing  that  solici- 
tor. The  cause  was  to  come  on  yesterday.  He  is  abso- 
lutely as  indifferent  to  the  decision  as  if  it  were  a  question 
to  be  tried  at  Pekin.  Peradveuture  from  some  whisper- 
ing, going  on  about  the  house,  not  intended  for  his  hearing, 
he  picks  up  enough  to  make  him  understand  that  things 
went  cross-grained  in  the  court  yesterday,  and  his  friend 
is  mined.  But  the  word  "  friend,"  and  the  word  "  ruin," 
disturb  him  no  more  than  so  much  jargon.  He  ls  not  to 
tliink  of  anything  but  how  to  get  better. 

What  a  world  of  foreign  cares  are  merged  in  that 
absorbing  consideration ! 

He  has  i^ut  on  the  strong  annour  of  sickness,  he  is 
wrapped  in  the  callous  hide  of  suffering ;  he  keeps  his 
sympathy,  like  some  cxuioiLS  vintage,  imder  triLsty  lock 
and  key,  for  his  owti  use  only. 

He  lies  pitjing  himself,  honing  and  moaning  to  him- 
self;  he  yeameth  over  hiuLself ;  his  bowels  are  even  melted 
within  him,  to  think  what  he  suffers ;  he  is  not  ashamed 
to  weep  over  himself 

He  is  for  ever  plotting  how  to  do  some  good  to  him- 
self ;  studjing  little  stratagems  and  artificial  alle\iations. 

He  makes  the  most  of  himself;  dividing  himself,  by 
an  allowable  fiction,  into  as  many  distinct  individuals  as 
he  hath  sore  and  sorrowing  members.  Sometimes  he 
meditates — as  of  a  thing  apart  from  him — upon  his  poor 
aching  head,  and  that  didl  pain  which,  dozing  or  waking, 
lay  in  it  all  the  past  night  like  a  log,  or  palpable  substance 
of  pain,  not  to  be  removed  \nthout  opening  the  very  skull, 
as  it  seemed,  to  take  it  thence.  Or  he  pities  his  long, 
clammy,  attenuated  fingers.     He  compassionates  liimself 


248  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

all  over ;  and  his  bed  is  a  very  discipline  of  humanity, 
and  tender  heart. 

He  is  his  own  sympathizer ;  and  instinctively  feels  that 
none  can  so  well  perform  that  office  for  him.  He  cares 
for  few  spectators  to  his  tragedy.  Only  that  pmictual 
face  of  the  old  nurse  pleases  him,  that  announces  his 
broths  and  his  cordials.  He  likes  it  because  it  is  so  un- 
moved, and  because  he  can  pom*  forth  his  feverish  ejacu- 
lations before  it  as  unreservedly  as  to  his  bed-post. 

To  the  world's  business  he  is  dead.  He  understands 
not  what  the  callings  and  occuijations  of  mortals  are  ;  only 
lie  has  a  glimmering  conceit  of  some  such  thing,  when  the 
doctor  makes  his  daily  call ;  and  even  in  the  lines  on  that 
busy  face  he  reads  no  multipUcity  of  patients,  but  solely 
conceives  of  himself  as  the  sick  man.  To  what  other  un- 
easy couch  the  good  man  is  hastening,  when  he  slips  out 
of  his  chamber,  folding  up  his  thin  doucem*  so  carefully, 
for  fear  of  rustling — is  no  speculation  which  he  can  at 
present  entertain.  He  thinks  only  of  the  regidar  return 
of  the  same  phenomenon  at  the  same  hoiu*  to-morrow. 

HoiLsehold  rumoiu's  touch  him  not.  Some  faint  mur- 
mur, indicative  of  life  going  on  wthin  the  house,  soothes 
him,  while  he  knows  not  distinctly  what  it  is.  He  is  not 
to  know  anything,  not  to  think  of  anything.  Servants 
gliding  up  or  down  the  distant  staircase,  treading  as  ujion 
velvet,  gently  keep  his  ear  awake,  so  long  as  he  troubles 
not  himself  further  than  wdtli  some  feeble  guess  at  their 
errands.  Exacter  knowledge  woidd  be  a  burthen  to  him  : 
he  can  just  endiu"e  the  pressm'e  of  conjecture.  He  opens 
his  eye  fixintly  at  the  dull  stroke  of  the  muffled  knocker, 
and  closes  it  again  without  asking  "Who  was  it  ?"  He 
is  flattered  by  a  general  notion  that  inquiries  are  making 
after  him,  but  he  cares  not  to  know  the  name  of  the  in- 
quirer. In  the  general  stillness,  and  awful  hush  of  the 
house,  he  lies  in  state,  and  feels  his  sovereignty. 

To  be  sick  is  to  enjoy  monarchal  prerogatives.  Com- 
pare the  silent  tread  and  quiet  ministry,  almost  by  the 
eye  only,  with  which  he  is  served — with  the  careless  de- 


THE  CONVALESCENT.  249 

meanoiir,  the  unceremonious  goings  in  and  out  (slapping 
of  doors,  or  leaving  them  open)  of  the  very  same  attend- 
ants, when  he  is  getting  a  little  better — and  you  will  "con- 
fess, that  from  the  bed  of  sickness  (throne  let  me  rather 
call  it)  to  the  elbow-chair-  of  convalescence,  is  a  fall  from 
dignity,  amoimtiug  to  a  deposition. 

How  convalescence  shrinks  a  man  back  to  his  pristine 
statm-e  !  Where  is  now  the  space,  which  he  occupied  so 
lately,  in  his  own,  in  the  family's  eye  1 

The  scene  of  his  regalities,  his  sick  room,  which  was 
his  presence-chamber,  where  he  lay  and  acted  his  despotic 
fancies — how  is  it  reduced  to  a  common  bedroom  !  The 
trimness  of  the  very  bed  has  something  petty  and  im- 
meaning  about  it.  It  is  made  every  day.  How  unlike 
to  that  wavy,  many-frnxowed,  oceanic  surface,  which  it 
presented  so  short  a  time  since,  when  to  make  it  was  a 
service  not  to  be  thought  of  at  oftener  than  three  or  fom- 
day  revolutions,  when  the  patient  was  with  pain  and  grief 
to  be  lifted  for  a  little  while  out  of  it,  to  submit  to  the 
encroachments  of  unwelcome  neatness,  and  decencies  which 
his  shaken  frame  deprecated;  then  to  be  lifted  into  it 
again,  for  another  three  or  fom-  days'  respite,  to  flounder 
it  out  of  shape  again,  while  every  fresh  fiuTow  was  an 
historical  record  of  some  shifting  posture,  some  uneasy 
tm-niug,  some  seeking  for  a  little  ease ;  and  the  shninkeu 
skin  scarce  told  a  truer  story  than  the  crumpled  coverlid. 

Hushed  are  those  mysterious  sighs — those  groans — so 
much  more  awful,  while  we  knew  not  from  what  caverns 
of  vast  hidden  suffering  they  proceeded.  The.  Lernean 
pangs  are  quenched.  The  riddle  of  sickness  is  solved ; 
and  Philoctetes  is  become  an  ordinary  personage. 

Perhaps  some  relic  of  the  sick  man's  ch-eam  of  great- 
ness siu-vives  in  the  still  lingering  visitations  of  the  medi- 
cal attendant.  But  how  is  he,  too,  changed  wdth  every- 
thing else  1  Can  this  be  he — this  man  of  news — of  chat 
— of  anecdote — of  everything  but  physic — can  this  be  he, 
who  so  lately  came  between  the  patient  and  his  cruel 
enemy,  as  on  some  solemn  embassy  from  Nature,  erecting 


250  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

herself  into  a  high  mediatiug  party  1 — Pshaw  !  'tis  some 
old  woman. 

Farewell  with  him  all  that  made  sickness  pompous — 
the  spell  that  hushed  the  household — the  desert-like  still- 
ness, felt  throughout  its  inmost  chambers — the  unite 
attendance — the  inquiry  liy  looks — the  still  softer  deli- 
cacies of  self-attention — the  sole  and  single  eye  of  dis- 
temper alonely  fixed  upon  itself — world-thoughts  excluded 
— the  man  a  world  mito  himself — his  own  theatre — 

Wliat  a  speck  is  he  dwindled  into  ! 

In  this  flat  swamp  of  convalescence,  left  by  the  ebb  of 
sickness,  yet  far  enough  from  the  terra-firma  of  established 
health,  your  note,  dear  Editor,  reached  me,  requesting — 
an  article.  In  Articulo  Moi'tis,  thought  I  ;  l)ut  it  is 
something  hard — and  the  quibble,  wretched  as  it  was, 
relieved  me.  The  summons,  imseasonable  as  it  appeared, 
seemed  to  link  me  on  again  to  the  petty  businesses  of 
life,  which  I  had  lost  sight  of;  a  gentle  call  to  activity, 
however  trivial ;  a  wholesome  weaning  from  that  prepos- 
terous dream  of  self-absorption — the  puffy  state  of  sick- 
ness— in  which  I  confess  to  have  lain  so  long,  insensible 
to  the  magazines  and  monarchies  of  the  world  alike ;  to 
its  laws,  and  to  its  literature.  The  hypochondriac  flatus 
is  subsiding  ;  the  acres,  which  in  imagination  I  had  spread 
over — for  the  sick  man  swells  in  the  sole  coiitemplation 
of  his  single  sufi'erings,  till  he  becomes  a  Titjiis  to  him- 
self— are  wasting  to  a  span ;  and  f»jr  the  giant  of  self- 
imjiortance,  which  I  was  so  lately,  you  have  me  once 
again  in  my  natiu'al  pretensions — the  lean  and  meagre 
figure  of  your  insignificant  Essayist. 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS.  251 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS. 

So  far  from  the  250sitioii  holding  true,  that  great  wit  (or 
genius,  in  oiu"  modern  way  of  speaking)  has  a  necessary 
alliance  with  insanity,  tlie  greatest  wits,  on  the  contrary, 
will  ever  be  found  to  be  the  sanest  writers.  It  is  im- 
possible for  the  mind  to  conceive  of  a  mad  Shakspeare. 
The  greatness  of  wit,  by  which  the  poetic  talent  is  here 
chiefly  to  be  understood,  manifests  itself  in  the  admirable 
balance  of  all  the  faculties.  Madness  is  the  dispropor- 
tionate straining  or  excess  of  any  one  of  them.  "  So 
strong  a  wit,"  says  Cowley,  speaking  of  a  poetical  friend, 

" (lid  Nature  to  him  frame, 

As  all  tilings  but  his  judgment  overcame  ; 

His  judgment  like  the  heavenly  moon  did  show, 

Tempering  that  mighty  sea  helow." 

The  ground  of  the  mistake  is,  that  men,  finding  in 
the  raptm'es  of  the  higher  poetry  a  condition  of  exaltation, 
to  which  they  have  no  parallel  in  their  own  experience, 
besides  the  spurious  resemljlance  of  it  in  dreams  and 
fevers,  imjiute  a  state  of  dreaminess  and  fever  to  the  poet. 
But  the  tnie  poet  dreams  being  awake.  He  is  not  pos- 
sessed by  his  sulyject,  but  has  dominion  over  it.  In  the 
groves  of  Eden  he  walks  fomiliar  as  in  his  native  paths. 
He  ascends  the  empyrean  heaven,  and  is  not  intoxicated. 
He  treads  the  l^urning  marl  without  dismay  ;  he  wins  his 
flight  without  self-loss  through  realms  of  chaos  "  and  old 
night."  Or  if,  abandoning  himself  to  that  severer  chaos 
of  a  "human  mind  untuned,"  he  is  content  awhile  to  be 
mad  with  Lear,  or  to  hate  mankind  (a  sort  of  madness) 
with  Timon,  neither  is  that  madness,  nor  this  misanthropy, 
so  unchecked,  l)ut  that, — never  letting  the  reins  of  reason 
wholly  go,  wdiile  most  he  seems  to  do  so, — he  has  his 
better  genius  still  whispering  at  his  ear,  with  the  good 


252  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

servant  Kent  suggesting  saner  counsels,  or  with  the  honest 
steward  Fhivius  recommending  kindlier  resolutions. 
Where  he  seems  most  to  recede  from  humanity,  he  will 
be  found  the  truest  to  it.  From  beyond  the  scope  of 
Nature  if  he  summon  possible  existences,  he  subjugates 
them  to  the  law  of  her  consistency.  He  is  beautifully 
loyal  to  that  sovereign  directress,  even  when  he  appears 
most  to  betray  and  desert  her.  His  ideal  tribes  submit 
to  policy ;  his  very  monsters  are  tamed  to  his  hand,  even 
as  that  wild  sea-brood,  shepherded  by  Proteus.  He  tames, 
and  he  clothes  them  with  attributes  of  flesh  and  blood, 
till  they  wonder  at  themselves,  like  Indian  Islanders  forced 
to  submit  to  European  vesture.  Caliban,  the  Witches, 
are  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their  own  natiu-e  (ours  with  a 
difference),  as  Othello,  Hamlet,  and  Macbeth.  Herein 
the  great  and  the  little  wits  are  differenced ;  that  if  the 
latter  wander  ever  so  little  from  nature  or  actual  existence, 
tliey  lose  themselves  and  their  readers.  Their  phantoms 
are  lawless  ;  their  visions  nightmares.  They  do  not  create, 
which  implies  shaping  and  consistency.  Their  imagina- 
tions are  not  active — for  to  be  active  is  to  call  something 
into  act  and  form — but  passive,  as  men  in  sick  dreams. 
For  the  suj^er-natural,  or  something  super-added  to  what 
we  know  of  nature,  they  give  you  the  plainly  non-natural. 
And  if  this  were  all,  and  that  these  mental  hallucinations 
were  discoverable  only  in  the  treatment  of  subjects  out  of 
nature,  or  transcending  it,  the  judgment  might  with  some 
plea  be  pardoned  if  it  ran  riot,  and  a  little  wantonized : 
but  even  in  the  describing  of  real  and  every-day  life,  that 
which  is  before  their  eyes,  one  of  tliese  lesser  wits  shall 
more  deviate  from  nature — show  more  of  that  inconse- 
quence, which  has  a  natural  alliance  with  frenzy, — than 
a  great  genius  in  his  "maddest  fits,"  as  Wither  some- 
where calls  them.  We  appeal  to  any  one  that  is  acquainted 
with  the  common  run  of  Lane's  novels, — as  they  existed 
some  twenty  or  thirty  years  back, — those  scanty  intel- 
lectual viands  of  the  whole  female  reading  public;,  till  a 
hap])ier  genius  arose,  and  expelled  for  ever  the  innutritions 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS.  253 

phautoms, — whether  he  has  not  found  his  brain  more  "  be- 
tossed,"  his  memory  more  puzzled,  his  sense  of  when  and 
where  more  confounded,  among  the  improbable  events,  the 
incohei'ent  incidents,  the  inconsistent  characters,  or  no  char- 
acters, of  some  third-rate  love-intrigue — where  the  persons 
shall  be  a  Lord  Glendamom*  and  a  Miss  Rivers,  and  the 
scene  only  alternate  between  Bath  and  Bond  Street — a 
more  bewildering  cb'eaminess  induced  upon  him  than  he  has 
felt  wandering  over  all  the  faiiy-grounds  of  Spenser.  In 
the  productions  we  refer  to,  nothing  but  names  and  places 
is  femiliar ;  the  persons  are  neither  of  this  world  nor  of  any 
other  conceivable  one ;  an  endless  stream  of  activities 
without  purpose,  of  purposes  destitute  of  motive : — we 
meet  phantoms  in  our  known  walks ;  fantasqnes  only 
christened.  In  the  poet  we  have  names  which  announce 
fiction ;  and  we  have  absolutely  no  place  at  all,  for  the 
things  and  persons  of  the  Fairy  Queen  prate  not  of  their 
"whereabout."  But  in  their  inner  nature,  and  the  law  of 
their  speech  and  actions,  we  are  at  home,  and  upon  ac- 
quainted ground.  The  one  turns  life  into  a  dream ;  the 
other  to  the  wildest  dreams  gives  the  soljrieties  of  every- 
day occm-reuces.  By  what  sul)tle  art  of  tracing  the  mental 
processes  it  is  effected,  we  are  not  philosophers  enough  to 
explain,  but  in  that  wonderful  episode  of  the  cave  of 
Mammon,  in  which  the  Money  God  appears  first  in  the 
lowest  form  of  a  miser,  is  then  a  worker  of  metals,  and 
becomes  the  god  of  all  the  treasures  of  the  world ;  and 
has  a  daughter.  Ambition,  before  whom  all  the  world 
kneels  for  favours^-with  the  Hesperian  fruit,  the  waters 
of  Tantalus,  with  Pilate  washing  his  hands  vainly,  but 
not  impertinently,  in  the  same  stream — that  we  should 
be  at  one  moment  in  the  cave  of  an  old  hoarder  of  trea- 
sures, at  the  next  at  the  forge  of  the  Cyclops,  in  a  palace  and 
yet  in  hell,  all  at  once,  with  the  shifting  mutations  of  the 
most  rambling  dream,  and  om-  judgment  yet  all  the  time 
awake,  and  neither  able  nor  willing  to  detect  the  fallacy, 
— is  a  proof  of  that  hidden  sanity  which  still  guides  the 
poet  in  the  wildest  seeming-aberrations. 


254  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  the  whole  episode  is  a 
copy  of  the  mind's  conceptions  in  sleep  ;  it  is,  in  some  sort 
—but  what  a  copy  !  Let  the  most  romantic  of  us,  that 
has  been  entertained  all  night  with  the  spectacle  of  some 
wild  and  magnificent  vision,  recombine  it  in  the  morning, 
and  try  it  by  his  waking  judgment.  That  which  appeared 
so  shifting,  and  yet  so  coherent,  while  that  fixculty  was 
passive,  when  it  comes  under  cool  examination  shall  appear 
so  reasonless  and  so  unlinked,  that  we  are  ashamed  to 
have  been  so  deluded ;  and  to  have  taken,  though  but  in 
sleep,  a  monster  for  a  god.  But  the  transitions  in  this 
episode  are  eveiy  whit  as  violent  as  in  the  most  extrava- 
gant dream,  and  yet  the  waking  judgment  ratifies  them. 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON. 

Among  the  deaths  in  our  obituary  for  this  month,  I  ob 
serve  with  concern  "At  his  cottage  on  the  Bath  Road, 
Captain  Jackson."  The  name  and  attribution  are  com- 
mon enough ;  Ijut  a  feeling  like  reproach  persuades  me 
that  this  could  have  been  no  other  in  fact  than  my  dear 
old  friend,  who  some  five-and-twenty  years  ago  rented  a 
tenement,  which  he  was  pleased  to  dignify  with  the 
appellation  here  used,  about  a  mile  from  Westbouni 
Green.  Alack,  how  good  men,  and .  the  good  turns  they 
do  us,  slide  out  of  memory,  and  are  recalled  but  by  the 
surprise  of  some  such  sad  memento  as  that  which  now 
lies  before  us  ! 

He  whom  I  mean  was  a  retired  half-pay  ofiicer,  with  a 
wife  and  two  grown-up  daughters,  whom  he  maintained 
with  the  port  and  notions  of  gentlewomen  upon  that 
slender  professional  allowance.  Comely  girls  they  were, 
too. 

And  was  I  in  danger  of  forgetting  this  man  1 — his 
cheerful  suppers — the  noble  tono  of  hos})itality,  when  first 
you  set  your  foot  in  the  cottage — the  anxious  ministerings 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  255 

about  you,  where  little  or  nothing  (God  know«)  was  to  be 
niiuistered. — Althca's  horn  in  a  poor  platter — the  power 
of  self-enchautment,  by  which,  in  his  magnificent  wishes 
to  entertain  you,  he  multiplied  his  means  to  bounties. 

You  saw  with  your  bodily  eyes  indeed  what  seemed  a 
bare  scrag — cold  savings  from  the  foregone  meal — remnant 
hardly  sufficient  to  send  a  mendicant  from  the  door  con- 
tented. But  in  the  copious  will — the  revelling  imagina- 
tion of  yoiu"  host — the  "  mind,  the  mind.  Master  Shallow," 
whole  beeves  were  spread  before  you — hecatombs — no  end 
appeared  to  the  profusion. 

It  was  the  widow's  cnise — the  loaves  and  fishes; 
carving  could  not  lessen,  nor  helping  diminish  it — the 
stamina  were  left — the  elemental  bones  still  flourished, 
divested  of  its  accidents. 

"  Let  us  live  while  we  can,"  metliinks  I  hear  the  open- 
handed  creature  exclaim;  "while  we  have,  let  us  not 
want,"  "here  is  plenty  left ;"  "  want  for  nothing " — with 
many  more  such  hospitable  sayings,  the  spurs  of  appetite, 
and  old  concomitants  of  smoking  boards  and  feast -op- 
pressed chargers.  Then  sliding  a  slender  ratio  of  Single 
Gloucester  upon  his  wife's  plate,  or  the  daughters',  he 
woidd  convey  the  remanent  rind  into  his  own,  with  a 
merry  quirk  of  "  the  nearer  the  bone,"  etc.,  and  declaring 
that  he  universally  preferred  the  outside.  For  we  had 
our  table  distinctions,  you  are  to  know,  and  some  of  us  in 
a  manner  sate  above  the  salt.  None  but  his  guest  or 
giiests  dreamed  of  tasting  flesh  luxvu-ies  at  night,  the 
fragments  were  ver'k  hospitibus  sacra.  But  of  one  thing 
or  another  there  was  always  enough,  and  leavings  :  only 
he  would  sometimes  finish  the  remainder  crust,  to  show 
that  he  wished  no  savings. 

Wine  we  had  none ;  nor,  except  on  very  rai"e  occa- 
sions, spirits  ;  biit  the  sensation  of  wine  was  there.  Some 
thin  kind  of  ale  I  remember — "  British  beverage,"  he 
would  say!  "Push  about,  my  boys;"  "Drink  to  your 
sweethearts,  girls."  At  every  meagre  draught  a  toast 
must  ensue,  or  a  song.     All  the  forms  of  good  liquor  were 


250  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

there,  with  none  of  the  eftects  wanting.  Shut  your  eyes, 
and  yoii  would  swear  a  caiDacious  bowl  of  punch  was 
foaming  in  the  centre,  with  beams  of  generous  Port  or 
Madeira  radiating  to  it  from  each  of  the  table  corners. 
You  got  flustered,  without  knowing  whence  ;  tijisy  upon 
words  ;  and  reeled  under  the  potency  of  his  unperforming 
Bac(;hanalian  encouragements. 

We  had  our  songs — "  Why,  Soldiers,  why," — and  the 
"  British  Grenadiers  " — in  which  last  we  were  all  obliged 
to  bear  chorus.  Both  the  daughters  sang.  Their  pro- 
ficiency was  a  nightly  theme — the  masters  he  had  given 
them — the  "  no-expense  "  which  he  spared  to  accomplish 
them  in  a  science  "  so  necessary  to  young  women."  But 
then — they  could  not  sing  "  without  the  instrument." 

Sacred,  and,  by  me,  never-to-be-violated,  secrets  of 
Poverty !  Shoidd  I  disclose  yom-  honest  aims  at  gran- 
deur, yoiu-  makeshift  efl^brts  of  magnificence^  Sleep, 
sleep,  with  all  thy  broken  keys,  if  one  of  the  bunch  be 
extant ;  thrummed  by  a  thousand  ancestral  thumbs  ;  dear, 
cracked  spinnet  of  dearer  Louisa  !  Without  mention  of 
mine,  be  dumb,  thou  thin  accompanier  of  her  thinner 
warble !  A  veil  be  si:)read  over  the  dear  delighted  foce 
of  the  well -deluded  father,  who  now  liaply  listening  to 
cherubic  notes,  scarce  feels  sincerer  pleasure  than  when 
she  awakened  thy  time-shaken  chords  responsive  to  the 
twitterings  of  that  slender  image  of  a  voice. 

We  were  not  without  our  literary  talk  either.  It  did 
not  extend  far,  but  as  far  as  it  went  it  was  good.  It  was 
bottomed  well ;  had  good  grounds  to  go  upon.  In  the 
cottage  was  a  room,  which  tradition  authenticated  to  have 
been  the  same  in  which  Glover,  in  his  occasional  retire- 
ments, had  penned  the  greater  part  of  his  Leonidas.  This 
circumstance  was  nightly  quoted,  though  none  of  the 
present  inmates,  that  I  could  discover,  appeared  ever  to 
have  met  with  the  jiocm  in  question.  But  that  was  no 
matter.  Glover  had  written  there,  and  the  anecdote  was 
pressed  into  the  account  of  the  family  importance.  It 
diffused  a  learned  air  through  the  apartment,  the  little 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  257 

side  casement  of  which  (the  poet's  study  window),  open- 
ing upon  a  superb  view  as  far  as  the  pretty  spire  of 
Harrow,  over  domains  and  patrimonial  acres,  not  a  r(iod 
nor  square  yard  whereof  om-  host  coidd  call  his  own,  yet 
gave  occasion  to  an  immoderate  expansion  of — vanity 
shall  I  call  it  ? — in  his  bosom,  as  he  showed  them  in  a 
glowing  summer  evening.  It  was  all  his,  he  took  it  all 
in,  and  communicated  rich  portions  of  it  to  his  guests.  It 
was  a  part  of  his  largess,  his  hospitality ;  it  was  going  over 
his  grounds ;  he  was  lord  for  the  time  of  showing  them, 
and  you  the  implicit  lookers-up  to  his  magnificence. 

He  was  a  juggler,  who  threw  mists  before  your  eyes — 
you  had  no  time  to  detect  his  fallacies.  He  would  say, 
"  Hand  me  the  silve?-  sugar-tongs  ;"  and  before  you  could 
discover  it  was  a  single  spoon,  and  that  2^i'ited,  he  would 
disturb  and  captivate  your  imagination  by  a  misnomer  of 
"  the  ui-n  "  for  a  tea-kettle  ;  or  by  calling  a  homely  bench 
a  sofa.  Rich  men  direct  you  to  their  furniture,  poor 
ones  divert  you  from  it ;  he  neither  did  one  nor  the  other, 
but  by  simply  assuming  that  everything  was  handsome 
al)out  him,  you  were  positively  at  a  denuir  what  you  did, 
or  did  not  see,  at  the  cottage.  With  nothing  to  live  on, 
he  seemed  to  live  on  everything.  He  had  a  stock  of 
wealth  in  his  mind ;  not  that  which  is  properly  termed 
Content,  for  in  tmth  he  was  not  to  be  contained  at  all, 
1iut  overflowed  all  bounds  by  the  force  of  a  magnificent 
self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm  is  catching;  and  even  his  wife,  a  sober 
native  of  North  Britain,  who  generally  saw  things  more 
as  they  were,  was  not  proof  against  the  continual  collision 
of  his  crediility.  Her  daughters  were  rational  and  dis- 
creet young  women ;  in  the  main,  perhajis,  not  insensil)le 
to  their  true  circumstances.  I  have  seen  them  assume  a 
thoughtful  air  at  times.  But  such  was  the  preponderat- 
ing opidence  of  his  foncy,  that  I  am  persuaded  not  for 
any  half  horn-  together  did  they  ever  look  their  own 
prospects  fairly  in  the  fiice.  There  was  no  resisting  the 
vortex  of  his  temperament.  His  riotous  imagination 
S 


258  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

conjured  up  handsome  settlements  before  their  eyes,  which 
kept  them  up  in  the  eye  of  the  world  too,  and  seem  at 
last  to  have  realized  themselves ;  for  they  both  have 
married  since,  I  am  told,  more  than  respectably. 

It  is  long  since,  and  my  memory  waxes  dim  on  some 
subjects,  or  I  should  wish  to  convey  some  notion  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  pleasant  creature  described  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  own  wedding-day.  I  faintly  remember 
something  of  a  chaise-and-four,  in  which  he  made  his 
entry  into  Glasgow  on  that  morning  to  fetch  the  bride 
home,  or  carry  her  thither,  I  forget  which.  It  so  com- 
pletely made  out  the  stanza  of  the  old  ballad — 

When  we  came  do^vn  tlirougli  Glasgow  town, 

We  were  a  comely  sight  to  see  ; 
My  love  was  clad  in  black  velvet, 

And  I  myself  in  cramasie. 

I  suppose  it  was  the  only  occasion  upon  which  his  own 
actual  splendour  at  all  corresponded  with  the  world's 
notions  on  that  subject.  In  homely  cart,  or  travelling 
caravan,  by  whatever  humble  vehicle  they  chanced  to  be 
transported  in  less  prosperous  days,  the  ride  through  Glas- 
gow came  back  upon  his  fancy,  not  as  a  hmniliating  con- 
trast, but  as  a  fair  occasion  for  reverting  to  that  one  day's 
state.  It  seemed  an  "  equipage  etern  "  from  which  no 
l^ower  of  fi^te  or  fortune,  once  mounted,  had  power  there- 
after to  dislodge  him. 

There  is  some  merit  in  putting  a  handsome  face  upon 
indigent  circmustances.  To  bully  and  swagger  away  the 
sense  of  them  before  strangers,  may  not  be  always  dis- 
commendable. Tibbs,  and  Bobadil,  even  when  detected, 
have  more  of  our  admiration  than  contempt.  But  for  a 
man  to  put  the  cheat  upon  himself;  to  play  the  Bobadil 
at  home  ;  and,  steeped  in  poverty  up  to  the  lips,  to  fancy 
himself  all  the  while  chin-deep  in  riches,  is  a  strain  of 
constitutional  philosophy,  and  a  masteiy  over  fortmie, 
which  was  reserved  for  my  old  friend  Captain  Jackson. 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  259 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN. 

Sera  tameii  respexit 
Libertas.  Virgil. 

A  Clerk  I  was  in  London  gay. — O'Keefe. 

If  iDeradventiu-e,  Reader,  it  has  been  thy  lot  to  waste  the 
golden  years  of  thy  life — thy  shining  youth — in  the  irk- 
some confinement  of  an  otticc  ;  to  have  thy  prison  days 
prolonged  through  middle  age  down  to  decrepitude  and 
silver  hairs,  without  hope  of  release  or  respite ;  to  have 
lived  to  forget  that  there  are  such  things  as  holidays,  or 
to  remember  them  but  as  the  prerogatives  of  childhood ; 
then,  and  then  only,  will  you  be  able  to  appreciate  my 
deliverance. 

It  is  now  six-and-thirty  years  since  I  took  my  seat  at 
the  desk  in  Mincing  Lane.  Melancholy  was  the  transi- 
tion at  fourteen  from  the  abundant  playtime,  and  the 
frequently -intervening  vacations  of  school  days,  to  the 
eight,  nine,  and  sometimes  ten  hours'  a-day  attendance  at 
the  counting-house.  But  time  partially  reconciles  us  to 
anything.  I  gi-adually  became  content — doggedly  con- 
tented, as  wild  animals  in  cages. 

It  is  true  I  had  my  Sundays  to  myself;  but  Sundays, 
admirable  as  the  institution  of  them  is  for  purposes 
of  worship,  are  for  that  very  reason  the  very  worst 
adapted  for  days  of  unbending  and  recreation.  In 
particular,  there  is  a  gloom  for  me  attendant  upon  a 
city  Sunday,  a  weight  in  the  air.  I  miss  the  cheerful 
cries  of  London,  the  music,  and  the  ballad-singers — the 
buzz  and  stirring  murmur  of  the  streets.  Those  eternal 
bells  depress  me.  The  closed  shops  repel  me.  Prints, 
pictures,  all  the  glittering  and  endless  succession  of  knacks 
and  gewgaws,  and  ostentatiously  displayed  wares  of 
tradesmen,  wliich  make  a  weekday  saunter  through  the 


260  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

less  busy  parts  of  the  metropolis  so  delightful — are  shut 
out.  No  book-stalls  deliciously  to  idle  over — no  busy 
faces  to  recreate  the  idle  man  who  contemplates  them 
ever  passing  by — the  very  foce  of  business  a  charm  by 
contrast  to  his  temporary  relaxation  from  it.  Nothing  to 
be  seen  but  unhapj^y  countenances — or  half-happy  at  best 
— of  emancipated  'prentices  and  little  tradesfolks,  with 
here  and  there  a  servant-maid  that  has  got  leave  to  go 
out,  who,  slaving  all  the  week,  with  the  habit  has  lost 
almost  the  capacity  of  enjoying  a  free  hour ;  and  livelily 
expressing  the  hoUowness  of  a  day's  pleasiuing.  The 
very  strollers  in  the  fields  on  that  day  look  anything  but 
comfortable. 

But  besides  Sundays,  I  had  a  day  at  Easter,  and  a 
day  at  Christmas,  with  a  full  week  in  the  summer  to  go 
and  air  myself  in  my  native  fields  of  Hertfordshire. 
This  last  was  a  great  indidgence ;  and  the  prospect  of  its 
recurrence,  I  believe,  alone  kept  me  up  through  the  year, 
and  made  my  dvu'ance  tolerable.  But  when  the  week 
came  round,  did  the  glittering  phantom  of  the  distance 
keep  touch  with  me,  or  rather  was  it  not  a  series  of 
seven  uneasy  days,  spent  in  restless  pursuit  of  pleasm-e, 
and  a  wearisome  anxiety  to  find  out  how  to  make  the 
most  of  them?  Where  was  the  quiet,  where  the  promised 
rest  1  Before  I  had  a  taste  of  it,  it  was  vanished.  I 
was  at  the  desk  again,  counting  upon  the  fifty-one  tedious 
weeks  that  must  intervene  before  such  another  snatch 
would  come.  Still  the  jirospect  of  its  coming  threw 
something  of  an  illumination  upon  the  darker  side  of  my 
cai)tivity.  Without  it,  as  I  have  said,  I  could  scarcely 
have  sustained  my  thraldom. 

Independently  of  the  rigours  of  attendance,  I  have  ever 
been  haunted  with  a  sense  (perhaps  a  mere  caprice)  of 
incapacity  for  business.  This,  during  my  latter  years, 
had  increased  to  such  a  degree,  that  it  was  visible  in  all 
the  lines  of  my  countenance.  My  health  and  my  good 
spirits  flagged.  I  had  jjerpetually  a  dread  of  some 
crisis,    to  which    I    should  be  found  unequal.     Besides 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  '^    261 

my  daylight  servitude,  I  served  over  aguiii  all  night 
in  my  sleep,  and  would  awake  with  terrors  of  imaginary 
false  entries,  errors  in  my  accoimts,  and  the  like.  I 
was  fifty  years  of  age,  and  no  prospect  of  emancipation 
presented  itself.  I  had  grown  to  my  desk,  as  it  were ; 
and  the  wood  had  entered  into  my  soid. 

]\Iy  fellows  in  the  office  woidd  sometimes  rally  me 
upon  the  trouble  legible  in  my  countenance ;  Imt  I  did 
not  know  that  it  had  raised  the  suspicions  of  any  of  my 
employers,  when,  on  the  fifth  of  last  month,  a  day  ever 

to  be  remembered  by  me,  L ,  the  junior  partner  in 

the  fii-m,  calling  me  on  one  side,  directly  taxed  me  ^\ith 
my  bad  looks,  and  frankly  inqiured  the  cause  of  them. 
So  taxed,  I  honestly  made  confession  of  my  infirmity, 
and  added  that  I  was  afraid  I  should  eventually  he 
obliged  to  resign  his  service.  He  spoke  some  words  of 
course  to  hearten  me,  and  there  the  matter  rested.  A 
whole  week  I  remained  laboiu:ing  under  the  impression 
that  I  had  acted  imprudently  in  my  disclosure ;  that  I 
had  foolishly  given  a  handle  against  myself,  and  had  been 
anticipating  my  o-^ti  dismissal.  A  week  passed  in  this 
manner — the  most  anxious  one,  I  verily  believe,  in  my 
whole  life — when  on  the  evening  of  the  12th  of  April, 
just  as  I  was  about  quitting  my  desk  to  go  home  (it 
might  be  about  eight  o'clock),  I  received  an  awful  sum- 
mons to  attend  the  presence  of  the  whole  assembled  firm 
in  the  formidable  back  parlom-.  I  thought  now  my  time 
is  surely  come,  I  have  done  for  myself,  I  am  going  to  be 

told  that  they  have  no  longer  occasion  for  me.     L , 

I  coul'd  see,  smiled  at  the  terror  I  was  in,  which  was 
a  little  relief  to  me, — when  to  my  utter  astonishment 

B ,  the  eldest  partner,  began  a  formal  harangue  to 

me  on  the  length  of  my  services,  my  very  meritorious 
conduct  diu-ing  the  whole  of  the  time  (the  deuce,  thought 
I,  how  did  he  find  out  that  1  I  protest  I  never  had  the 
confidence  to  think  as  much).  He  went  on  to  descant 
on  the  expediency  of  retiring  at  a  certain  time  of  life, 
(how  my  heart  panted  !)  and  asking  me  a  few  questions  as 


262  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

to  the  amount  of  my  own  property,  of  which  I  have  a  little, 
ended  with  a  proposal,  to  which  his  three  partners  nodded 
a  grave  assent,  that  I  should  accejjt  from  the  house, 
which  I  had  served  so  well,  a  pension  for  life  to  the 
amount  of  two-thirds  of  my  accustomed  salary — a  mag- 
nificent offer  !  I  do  not  know  what  I  answered  between 
surprise  and  gratitude,  but  it  was  understood  that  I  ac- 
cei^ted  their  proposal,  and  I  was  told  that  I  was  free 
from  that  hour  to  leave  their  service.  I  stammered  out 
a  bow,  and  at  just  ten  minutes  after  eight  I  went  home 
— for  ever.  This  noble  benefit — gratitude  forbids  me  to 
conceal  their  names — -I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  the  most 
munificent  firm  in  the  world — the  house  of  Boldcro, 
Merryweather,  Bosanquet,  and  Lacy. 

Esto  perpetua  ! 

For  the  first  day  or  two  I  felt  stunned — overwhelmed. 
I  could  only  apprehend  my  felicity  ;  I  was  too  confused 
to  taste  it  sincerely.  I  wandered  about,  thinking  I  was 
hapjiy,  and  knowing  that  I  was  not.  I  was  in  the  con- 
dition of  a  prisoner  in  the  old  Bastile,  suddenly  let  loose 
after  a  forty  years'  confinement.  I  could  scarce  trust 
myself  with  myself.  It  was  like  passing  out  of  Time 
into  Eternity — for  it  is  a  sort  of  Eternity  for  a  man  to 
have  all  his  Time  to  himself  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had 
more  time  on  my  hands  than  I  could  ever  manage.  From 
a  poor  man,  poor  in  Time,  I  was  suddenly  lifted  up  into  a 
vast  revenue ;  I  could  see  no  end  of  my  possessions ;  I 
wanted  some  steward,  or  judicious  bailiff,  to  manage  my 
estates  in  Time  for  me.  And  here  let  me  caution  persons 
grown  old  in  active  business,  not  lightly,  nor  without  weigh- 
ing their  own  resources,  to  forego  their  customary  employ- 
ment all  at  once,  for  there  may  be  danger  in  it.  I  feel 
it  by  myself,  but  I  know  that  my  resources  are  sufficient ; 
and  now  that  those  first  giddy  raptures  have  subsided,  I 
have  a  quiet  home-feeling  of  the  blessedness  of  my  con- 
dition. I  am  in  no  hurry.  Having  all  holidays,  I  am 
as  though  I  had  none.     If  Time  hung  heavy  upon  me,  I 


THE  SUPERANNaATED  MAN.  ,'    263 

coiilcl  walk  it  away ;  but  I  do  not  walk  all  day  long,  as  I 
used  to  do  in  those  old  transient  holidays,  thii'ty  miles  a 
day,  to  make  the  most  of  them.  If  Time  were  trouble- 
some, I  could  read  it  away ;  but  I  do  not  read  in  that 
violent  measiu-e,  with  which,  having  no  Time  my  own 
but  candlelight  Time,  I  used  to  weary  out  my  head  and 
eyesight  in  bygone  -winters.  I  walk,  read,  or  scribble 
(as  now)  just  when  the  fit  seizes  me.  I  no  longer  hunt 
after  pleasure ;  I  let  it  come  to  me.  I  am  like  the 
man 

that's  boru,  and  has  his  years  come  to  him, 


lu  some  green  desert. 

"  Years  ! "  you  will  say ;  "  what  is  this  superannuated 
simpleton  calculating  upon  1  He  has  already  told  us  he 
is  past  fifty." 

I  have  indeed  lived  nominally  fifty  years,  but  deduct 
out  of  them  the  hours  which  I  have  lived  to  other  people, 
and  not  to  myself,  and  you  will  find  me  still  a  young 
fellow.  For  that  is  the  only  true  Time,  which  a  man 
can  properly  call  his  own — that  which  he  has  all  to  him- 
self; the  rest,  though  in  some  sense  he  may  be  said  to 
live  it,  is  other  people's  Time,  not  his.  The  remnant  of 
my  poor  days,  long  or  short,  is  at  least  multiplied  for  me 
threefold.  My  ten  next  years,  if  I  stretch  so  for,  will  be 
as  long  as  any  preceding  thirty.  "Tis  a  fair  nde-of-three 
sum. 

Among  the  strange  fantasies  which  beset  me  at  the 
commencement  of  my  freedom,  and  of  which  all  traces 
are  not  yet  gone,  one  was,  that  a  vast  tract  of  time  had 
intervened  since  I  quitted  the  Coimtuig  House.  I  could 
not  conceive  of  it  as  an  afiair  of  yesterday.  The  partners, 
and  the  clerks  with  whom  I  had  for  so  many  years,  and 
for  so  many  hours  in  each  day  of  the  year,  been  closely 
associated — being  suddenly  removed  from  them — they 
seemed  as  dead  to  me.  There  is  a  fine  passage,  which 
may  serve  to  illustrate  this  fancy,  in  a  Tragedy  by  Sir 
Robert  Howard,  speaking  of  a  friend's  death  : — 


I 

i 

264  f  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

/: 
Twas  but  just  now  he  went  away  ; 

I  have  not  since  had  time  to  shed  a  tear  ; 

And  yet  the  distance  does  tlie  same  api)ear 

As  if  he  had  been  a  thousand  years  from  me. 

Time  takes  no  measure  in  Eternity. 

To  dissipate  this  awkward  feeling,  I  have  been  fain  to 
go  among  them  once  or  twice  since;  to  visit  my  old  desk- 
fellows —  my  co-brethren  of  the  quill — that  I  liad  left 
below  in  the  state  militant.  Not  all  the  kindness  with 
which  they  received  me  could  quite  restore  to  me  that 
pleasant  familiarity,  which  I  had  heretofore  enjoyed 
among  them.  We  cracked  some  of  om-  old  jokes,  but 
methought  tliey  went  off  but  ftxintly.  I\Iy  old  desk ;  the 
peg  where  I  hung  my  hat,  were  aj^propriated  to  another. 
I  knew  it  must  be,   but  I  could  not  take  it  kindly. 

D 1  take  me,  if  I  did  not  feel  some  remorse — beast, 

if  I  had  not — at  quitting  my  old  compeers,  the  ftxithful 
partners  of  my  toils  for  six-and-thirty  years,  that  soothed 
for  me  with  their  jokes  and  conundmms  the  niggedness 
of  my  professional  road.  Had  it  been  so  rugged  then, 
after  all  1  or  was  I  a  coward  simply  ?  Well,  it  is  too 
late  to  repent ;  and  I  also  know  that  these  suggestions 
are  a  common  fxllacy  of  the  mind  on  such  occasions. 
But  my  heart  smote  me.  I  had  violently  broken  the 
bands  betwixt  us.  It  was  at  least  not  courteous.  I 
shall  be  some  time  before  I  get  quite  reconciled  to  the 
separation.  Farewell,  old  cronies,  yet  not  for  long,  for 
again  and  again  I  will  come  among  ye,  if  I  shall  have  yovu" 

leave.     Farewell,  Ch ,  dry,  sarcastic,  and  friendly ! 

Do ,  mild,  slow  to  move,  and  gentlemanly  !     PI- , 

officious  to  do,  and  to  volunteer,  good  services! — and 
thou,  thou  dreary  pile,  fit  mansion  for  a  Gresham  or  a 
Whittington  of  ohl,  stately  house  of  Merchants;  with 
thy  labyrinthine  passages,  and  light -excluding,  pent-up 
offices,  where  candles  for  one-half  the  year  supplied  the 
jDlace  of  the  sun's  light ;  unhealthy  contributor  to  my 
weal,  stern  fosterer  of  my  living,  farewell !  In  thee 
remain,  and  not  in  the  obscm-e  collection  of  some  wander- 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  ALVN.  265 

iug  bookseller,  my  "  works  !  "  There  let  tlicm  rest,  as  I 
do  from  my  laboui-s,  piled  on  thy  massy  shelves,  more 
MSS.  in  folio  than  ever  Aqiiiuas  left,  and  full  as  useful ! 
My  mantle  I  bequeath  among  ye. 

A  fortnight  has  passed  since  the  date  of  my  first  com- 
munication. At  that  period  I  was  approaching  to  tran- 
quillity, but  had  not  reached  it.  I  boasted  of  a  calm 
indeed,  but  it  was  comparative  only.  Something  of  the 
first  flutter  was  left ;  an  unsettling  sense  of  novelty ;  the 
dazzle  to  weak  eyes  of  imaccustomed  light.  I  missed 
my  old  chains,  forsooth,  as  if  they  had  been  some 
necessaiy  part  of  my  apparel.  I  was  a  j^oor  Carthusian, 
from  strict  cellular  discipline  suddenly  by  some  re- 
volution returned  upon  the  world.  I  am  now  as  if  I 
had  never  been  other  than  my  own  master.  It  is 
natural  for  me  to  go  where  I  please,  to  do  what  I 
please.  I  find  myself  at  1 1  o'clock  in  the  day  in  Bond 
Street,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  saimtering 
there  at  that  very  hour  for  years  past.  I  digress 
into  Soho,  to  explore  a  bookstall.  Methinks  I  have  been 
thirty  years  a  collector.  There  is  nothing  strange  nor 
new  in  it.  I  find  myself  before  a  fine  picture  in  the 
morning.  Was  it  ever  otherwise  ?  What  is  become  of 
Fish  Street  Hill  1  Where  is  Fenchurch  Street  1  Stones 
of  old  Mincing  Lane,  which  I  have  worn  with  my  daily 
pilgrimage  for  six-and-thirty  years,  to  the  footsteps  of 
what  toil-worn  clerk  are  yoiir  everlasting  flints  now 
vocal?  I  indent  the  gayer  flags  of  Pall  Mall.  It  is 
'Change  time,  and  I  am  strangely  among  the  Elgin 
marbles.  It  was  no  hj-perbole  when  I  ventiu-ed  to  com- 
pare the  change  in  my  condition  to  passing  into  another 
world.  Time  stands  still  in  a  manner  to  me.  I  have 
lost  all  distinction  of  season.  I  do  not  know  the  day  of 
the  week  or  of  the  month.  Each  day  used  to  be  indi- 
vidually felt  by  me  in  its  reference  to  the  foreign  post 
days ;  in  its  distance  from,  or  propinquity  to,  the  next 
Sunday.  I  had  my  Wednesday  feelings,  my  Saturday 
nights'  sensations.     The  genius  of  each  day  was  upon  me 


2G6  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

distinctly  during  the  wliole  of  it,  aliectiiig  my  appetite, 
spirits,  etc.  The  i^hantom  of  the  next  day,  with  the 
dreary  five  to  follow,  sate  as  a  load  upon  my  poor  Sabbath 
recreations.  What  charm  has  washed  that  Ethiop  white  1 
What  is  gone  of  Black  Monday  1  All  days  are  the  same. 
Sunday  itself — that  unfortunate  failure  of  a  holiday,  as 
it  too  often  proved,  what  with  my  sense  of  its  fugitive- 
ness,  and  over -care  to  get  the  greatest  quantity  of 
pleasure  out  of  it — is  melted  down  into  a  week-day.  I 
can  spare  to  go  to  church  now,  without  grudging  the 
huge  cantle  which  it  used  to  seem  to  cut  out  of  the  holi- 
day. I  have  time  for  everything.  I  can  visit  a  sick 
friend.  I  can  interrupt  the  man  of  much  occupation 
when  he  is  bitsiest.  I  can  insult  over  him  with  an  invi- 
tation to  take  a  day's  pleasure  with  me  to  Windsor  this 
fine  May -morning.  It  is  Lucretiau  pleasure  to  behold 
the  poor  drudges,  whom  I  have  left  behind  in  the  world, 
carking  and  caring  ;  like  horses  in  a  mill,  drudging  on  in 
the  same  eternal  round — and  what  is  it  all  for?  A  man 
can  never  have  too  much  Time  to  himself,  nor  too  little 
to  do.  Had  I  a  little  son,  I  would  christen  him 
NoTHiNG-TO-DO  ;  he  should  do  nothing.  Man,  I  verily 
believe,  is  out  of  his  element  as  long  as  he  is  operative. 
I  am  altogether  for  the  life  contemplative.  Will  no 
kindly  earthquake  come  and  swallow  up  those  accursed 
cotton-mills  ?  Take  me  that  lumber  of  a  desk  there,  and 
bowl  it  down 

As  low  as  to  the  fiends. 

I  am  no  longer  *  *  *  *  "'''  *,  clerk  to  tlic  Firm  of,  etc. 
I  am  Eetired  Leisure.  I  am  to  be  met  with  in  trim 
gardens.  I  am  already  come  to  be  known  by  my  vacant 
face  and  careless  gesture,  perambulating  at  no  fixed  pace, 
nor  with  any  settled  purpose.  I  walk  about ;  not  to  and 
from.  They  tell  me,  a  certain  cum  dignitate  air,  that 
has  been  buried  so  long  with  my  other  good  parts,  has 
begun  to  shoot  forth  in  my  person.  I  grow  into  gentility 
perceptibly.     When  I  take  up  a  newspaper,  it  is  to  read 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.  267 

the  state  of  the  opera.  Opus  operatnm  ed.  I  have  done 
all  that  I  came  into  this  world  to  do.  I  have  worked 
task-work,  and  have  the  rest  of  the  day  to  myself. 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  AVRITING. 

It  is  an  ordinary  criticism,  that  my  Lord  Shaftesljury  and 
Sir  William  Temple  are  models  of  the  genteel  style  in 
writing.  We  shoidd  prefer  saying — of  the  lordly,  and 
the  gentlemanly.  Nothing  can  be  more  milike,  than  the 
inflated  finical  rhapsodies  of  Shaftesbuiy  and  the  plain 
natural  chit-chat  of  Temi)le.  The  man  of  rank  is  dis- 
cernible in  both  writers ;  but  in  the  one  it  is  only  insinu- 
ated gracefully,  in  the  other  it  stands  out  offensively. 
The  peer  seems  to  have  written  with  his  coronet  on,  and 
his  Earl's  mantle  before  him  ;  the  commoner  in  his 
elbow-chair  and  midress. — What  can  be  more  pleasant 
than  the  way  in  which  the  retired  statesman  peeps  out 
in  his  essays,  penned  by  the  latter  in  his  delightful 
retreat  at  Shene  ?  They  scent  of  Nimeguen  and  the 
Hague.  Scarce  an  authority  is  quoted  under  an  ambas- 
sador. Don  Francisco  de  Melo,  a  "  Portugal  Envoy  in 
England,"  tells  him  it  was  frequent  in  his  coimtry  for 
men,  spent  with  age  and  other  decays,  so  as  they  could 
not  hope  for  above  a  year  or  two  of  life,  to  ship  them- 
selves away  in  a  Brazil  fleet,  and  after  their  arrival  there 
to  go  on  a  great  length,  sometimes  of  twenty  or  thirty 
years,  or  more,  by  the  force  of  that  vigour  they  recovered 
with  that  remove.  "  Whether  such  an  effect  (Temple 
beautifully  adds)  might  grow  from  the  air,  or  tlie  fruits 
of  that  climate,  or  by  approaching  nearer  the  sun,  which 
is  the  fountain  of  light  and  heat,  when  their  natural 
heat  was  so  flir  decayed;  or  whether  the  piecing  out  of 
an  old  man's  life  were  worth  the  pains ;  I  cannot  tell  : 
perhaps  the  play  is  not  worth  the  candle."     Mousieiu- 


2G8  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Pompoiui,  "  Frencli  Ambassador  in  his  (Sir  William's) 
time  at  the  Hague,"  certifies  him,  that  in  his  life  he 
had  iu!ver  heard  of  any  man  in  France  that  arrived  at  a 
hundred  years  of  age  ;  a  limitation  of  life  which  the  old 
gentleman  imputes  to  the  excellence  of  their  climate, 
giving  them  such  a  liveliness  of  temper  and  humoiu',  as 
disposes  them  to  more  pleasures  of  all  Ivinds  than  in  other 
countries  ;  and  moralizes  upon  the  matter  very  sensibly. 
The  "  late  Robert  Earl  of  Leicester  "  furnishes  him  with 
a  story  of  a  Countess  of  Desmond,  married  out  of  Eng- 
land in  Edward  the  Fourth's  time,  and  who  lived  for  in 
King  James's  reign.  The  "  same  noble  person  "  gives 
him  an  account,  how  such  a  year,  in  the  same  reign,  there 
went  about  the  country  a  set  of  morrice-dancers,  com- 
posed of  ten  men  who  danced,  a  Maid  Marian,  and  a 
tabor  and  pipe  ;  and  how  these  twelve,  one  with  another, 
made  up  twelve  hundred  years.  "  It  was  not  so  much 
(says  Temple)  that  so  many  in  one  small  county  (Hert- 
fordshire) should  live  to  that  age,  as  that  they  should  be 
in  vigour  and  in  hiunour  to  travel  and  to  dance."  Mon- 
sieur Zulichem,  one  of  his  "  colleagues  at  the  Hague," 
informs  him  of  a  cure  for  the  gout ;  which  is  confirmed 
by  another  "  Envoy,"  Monsieur  Serinchamps,  in  that 
town,  who  had  tried  it. — Old  Prince  Maurice  of  Nassau 
recommends  to  him  the  use  of  hammocks  in  that  com- 
plaint ;  having  been  allured  to  sleep,  while  suffering 
under  it  himself,  by  the  "  constant  motion  or  swinging 
of  those  airy  beds."  Count  Egmont,  and  the  Rhinegrave 
who  "  was  killed  last  simamer  before  Maestricht,"  impart 
to  him  their  experiences. 

But  the  rank  of  the  writer  is  never  more  innocently 
disclosed,  than  where  he  takes  for  granted  the  compli- 
ments paid  by  foreigners  to  his  fruit-trees.  For  the  taste 
and  perfection  of  what  we  esteem  the  best,  he  can  tiidy 
say,  that  the  French,  who  have  eaten  his  peaches  and 
grai)es  at  Shene  in  no  very  ill  year,  have  generally  con- 
cluded that  the  last  are  as  good  as  any  they  have  eaten 
in  France  on  this  side  Fontainebleau  ;  and  the  first  as 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.  2G9 

good  as  any  they  have  eat  in  Gascony.  Italians  have 
agreed  his  white  figs  to  be  as  good  as  any  of  that  sort  in 
Italy,  which  is  the  earlier  kind  of  white  fig  there ;  for  in 
the  latter  kind  and  the  blue,  we  cannot  come  near  the 
warm  climates,  no  more  than  in  the  Frontignac  or  Muscat 
grape.  His  orange-trees,  too,  are  as  large  as  any  he  saw 
when  he  was  young  in  France,  except  those  of  Fontaine- 
bleau;  or  what  he  had  seen  since  in  the  Low  Countries, 
except  some  very  old  ones  of  the  Prince  of  Orange's.  Of 
grapes  he  had  the  honour  of  bringing  over  four  sorts  into 
England,  which  he  enumerates,  and  supposes  that  they 
are  all  by  this  time  pretty  common  among  some  gardeners 
in  his  neighbourhood,  as  well  as  several  persons  of 
quality;  for  he  ever  thought  all  things  of  this  kind  "the 
commoner  they  are  made  the  better."  The  garden 
pedantry  with  which  he  asserts  that  'tis  to  little  purpose 
to  plant  any  of  the  best  fruits,  as  peaches  or  grapes, 
hardly,  he  doubts,  beyond  Northamptonshire  at  the 
farthest  northwards;  and  praises  the  "Bishop  of  Mimster 
at  Cosevelt,"  for  attempting  nothing  beyond  cherries  in 
that  cold  climate  ;  is  equally  pleasant  and  in  character. 
"  I  may  perhaps"  (he  thus  ends  his  sweet  Garden  Essay 
with  a  passage  worthy  of  Cowley)  "  be  allowed  to  know 
something  of  this  trade,  since  I  have  so  long  allowed 
myself  to  be  good  for  nothing  else,  which  few  men  will 
do,  or  enjoy  their  gardens,  without  often  looking  abroad 
to  see  how  other  matters  play,  what  motions  in  the  state, 
and  what  invitations  they  may  hope  for  into  otlier  scenes. 
For  my  own  part,  as  the  country  life,  and  this  part  of  it 
more  particularly,  were  the  inclination  of  my  youth 
itself,  so  they  are  the  pleasiu-es  of  my  age ;  and  I  can 
truly  say  that,  among  many  great  employments  that  have 
Mien  to  my  share,  I  have  never  asked  or  sought  for  any 
of  them,  but  have  often  endeavoured  to  escape  from 
them,  into  the  ease  and  freedom  of  a  private  scene,  where 
a  man  may  go  his  own  way  and  his  o^YU  pace  in  the 
common  patlis  and  circles  of  life.  The  measure  of  choos- 
insr  well  is  whether  a  man   likes  what  he  has  chosen, 


270  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

which,  I  thank  God,  has  befallen  me ;  and  though  among 
the  follies  of  my  life,  building  and  planting  have  not  been 
the  least,  and  have  cost  me  more  than  I  have  the  confi- 
dence to  own ;  yet  they  have  been  fully  recomiDensed  by 
the  sweetness  and  satisfaction  of  this  retreat,  where, 
since  my  resolution  taken  of  never  entering  again  into 
any  public  employments,  I  have  passed  five  years  without 
ever  once  going  to  town,  though  I  am  almost  in  sight  of 
it,  and  have  a  house  there  always  ready  to  receive  me. 
Nor  has  this  been  any  sort  of  affectation,  as  some  have 
thought  it,  but  a  mere  want  of  desire  or  humour  to  make 
so  small  a  remove ;  for  when  I  am  in  this  corner  I  can 
truly  say  with  Horace,  Me  quoties  reficit,  etc. 

'  Me,  wlieu  tlie  cold  Digentian  stream  revives, 
Wliat  does  my  friend  believe  I  think  or  ask  ? 
Let  me  yet  less  possess,  so  I  may  live, 
Whate'er  of  life  remains,  unto  myself. 
May  I  have  books  enough  ;  and  one  year's  store, 
Not  to  depend  upon  each  doubtful  hour  : 
This  is  enough  of  mighty  Jove  to  pray, 
Who,  as  he  pleases,  gives  and  takes  away.' " 

The  writings  of  Temple  are,  in  general,  after  tliis  easy 
copy.  On  one  occasion,  indeed,  his  wit,  which  was 
mostly  subordinate  to  nature  and  tenderness,  has  seduced 
him  into  a  string  of  felicitous  antitheses ;  which,  it  is 
obvious  to  remark,  have  been  a  model  to  Addison  and 
succeeding  essayists.  "  Who  would  uot  be  covetous,  and 
with  reason,"  he  says,  "if  health  could  be  purchased 
Avitli  gold  1  who  not  ambitious,  if  it  were  at  the  command 
of  power,  or  restored  by  honour  ?  but,  alas  !  a  white  staff" 
will  not  help  gouty  feet  to  walk  better  than  a  common 
cane ;  nor  a  blue  ribband  bind  up  a  wound  so  well  as  a 
fillet.  The  glitter  of  gold,  or  of  diamonds,  will  but  hurt 
sore  eyes  instead  of  curing  them ;  and  an  aching  head 
will  be  no  more  eased  by  wearing  a  crown  than  a  common 
nightcap."  In  a  far  better  style,  and  more  accordant 
with  his  own  humour  of  plainness,  are  the  concluding 
sentences    of    his     "  Discourse    upon    Poetry."     Temple 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.  271 

took  a  part  in  the  controversy  about  the  ancient  and  tlie 
modern  learning;  and,  with  that  partiality  so  natural 
and  so  graceful  in  an  old  man,  whose  state  engagements 
had  left  him  little  leisure  to  look  into  modern  produc- 
tions, while  his  retirement  gave  him  occasion  to  look  back 
upon  the  classic  studies  of  his  youth — decided  in  favoiu* 
of  the  latter.  "  Certain  it  is,"  he  says,  "  that,  whether 
the  fierceness  of  the  Gothic  humom-s,  or  noise  of  their 
perpetual  wars,  frighted  it  away,  or  that  the  unequal 
mixture  of  the  modern  languages  would  not  bear  it — the 
great  heights  and  excellency  both  of  poetry  and  music 
fell  with  the  Roman  learning  and  empire,  and  have  never 
since  recovered  the  admiration  and  applauses  that  before 
attended  them.  Yet,  such  as  they  are  amongst  us,  they 
must  be  confessed  to  be  the  softest  and  the  sweetest,  the 
most  general  and  most  innocent  amusements  of  common 
time  and  life.  They  still  find  room  in  the  comis  of 
princes,  and  the  cottages  of  shepherds.  They  serve  to 
revive  and  animate  the  dead  calm  of  poor  arid  idle  lives, 
and  to  allay  or  divert  the  violent  passions  and  perturba- 
tions of  the  greatest  and  the  busiest  men.  And  both 
these  effects  are  of  equal  use  to  human  life ;  for  the  mind 
of  man  is  like  the  sea,  which  is  neither  agreeable  to  the 
beholder  nor  the  voyager,  in  a  calm  or  in  a  storm,  but  is 
so  to  both  when  a  little  agitated  by  gentle  gales  ;  and 
so  the  mind,  when  moved  by  soft  and  easy  passions  or 
affections.  I  know  very  well  that  many  who  pretend  to 
be  wise  by  the  forms  of  being  grave,  are  apt  to  despise 
both  poetry  and  music,  as  toys  and  trifles  too  light  for 
the  use  or  entertainment  of  serious  men.  But  whoever 
find  themselves  wholly  insensible  to  their  charms,  would, 
I  think,  do  well  to  keep  their  own  coimsel,  for  fear  of 
reproacliiug  their  own  temper,  and  bringing  the  goodness 
of  their  natures,  if  not  of  their  understandings,  into 
question.  While  this  world  lasts,  I  doubt  not  but  the 
pleasure  and  request  of  these  two  entertainments  ^vill  do 
so  too;  and  lia])py  those  that  content  themselves  with 
these,  or  any  other  so  easy  and  so  innocent,  and  do  not 


272  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

trouble  the  woi'ld  or  other  men,  because  they  cannot  be 
quiet  themselves,  though  nobody  hurts  them."  "  When 
all  is  done  (he  concludes),  human  life  is  at  the  greatest 
and  the  best  but  like  a  froward  child,  that  must  be 
played  with,  and  humoured  a  little,  to  keej)  it  quiet,  till 
it  falls  asleep,  and  then  the  care  is  over." 


BARBARA  S- 


On  the  noon  of  the  14th  of  November,  1743  or  4,  I  for- 
get which  it  was,  just  as  the  clock  had  struck  one,  Barbara 

S ,  with  her  accustomed  punctuality,  ascended  the 

long  rambling  staircase,  with  awkward  interposed  landing- 
places,  which  led  to  the  office,  or  rather  a  sort  of  box  with 
a  desk  in  it,  whereat  sat  the  then  treasm-er  of  (what  few 
of  our  readers  may  remember)  the  old  Bath  Theatre. 
All  over  the  island  it  was  the  custom,  and  remains  so  I 
believe  to  this  day,  for  the  players  to  receive  their  weekly 
stipend  on  the  Saturday.  It  was  not  much  that  Barbara 
had  to  claim. 

The  little  maid  had  just  entered  her  eleventh  year ; 
but  her  important  station  at  the  theatre,  as  it  seemed  to 
her,  with  the  benefits  which  she  felt  to  accrue  from  her 
l^ious  application  of  her  small  earnings,  had  given  an  air 
of  womanhood  to  her  steps  and  to  her  behaviour.  You 
would  have  taken  her  to  have  been  at  least  five  years 
older. 

Till  latterly  she  had  merely  been  employed  in  choruses, 
or  where  children  were  wanted  to  fill  up  the  scene.  But 
the  manager,  observing  a  diligence  and  adroitness  in  her 
above  her  age,  had  for  some  few  months  past  intrusted  to 
her  the  performance  of  whole  parts.  You  may  guess  the 
self-consequence  of  the  promoted  Barbara.  She  had  al- 
ready drawn  tears  in  young  Artluu" ;  had  rallied  Rii^hard 
with  infantine  petulance  in  the  Duke  of  York  ;  and  in  her 


BARBARA  S .  273 

tm"u  had  rebuked  that  petulance  when  slie  was  Prince  of 
Wales.  She  would  have  done  the  elder  child  in  Morton's 
pathetic  afterpiece  to  the  life  ;  but  as  yet  the  "  Children 
in  the  Wood"  was  not. 

Long  after  this  little  girl  was  grown  an  aged  woman, 
I  have  seen  some  of  these  small  parts,  each  making  two 
or  three  pages  at  most,  copied  out  in  the  nidest  hand  of 
the  then  promjitcr,  wdio  doubtless  transcribed  a  little  more 
carefidly  and  fairly  for  the  grown-up  tragedy  ladies  of  the 
establishment.  But  such  as  they  were,  blotted  and 
scrawled,  as  for  a  child's  use,  she  kept  them  all ;  and  in 
the  zenith  of  her  after  reputation  it  was  a  delightful  sight 
to  behold  them  bound  uj)  in  costliest  morocco,  each  single 
— each  small  part  making  a  hook — "with  fine  clasps,  gilt- 
splashed,  etc.  She  had  conscientiously  kept  them  as  they 
had  been  delivered  to  her ;  not  a  blot  had  been  effaced  or 
tampered  with.  They  were  precious  to  her  for  their 
aftecting  remembrancings.  They  were  her  principia,  her 
rudiments ;  the  elementary  atoms ;  the  little  steps  by 
which  she  pressed  forward  to  perfection.  "  What,"  she 
would  say,  "  could  India-rubber,  or  a  pumice-stone,  have 
done  for  these  darlings^" 

I  am  in  no  hurry  to  begin  my  story — indeed,  I  have 
little  or  none  to  tell— so  I  will  just  mention  an  observa- 
tion of  hers  connected  with  that  interesting  time. 

Not  long  before  she  died  I  had  been  discoursing  with 
her  on  the  qitantity  of  real  present  emotion  which  a  great 
tragic  performer  experiences  during  acting.  I  ventured 
to  think,  that  though  in  the  first  instance  such  players 
must  have  possessed  the  feelings  which  they  so  powerfully 
called  up  in  others,  yet  by  frequent  repetition  those  feel- 
ings must  become  deadened  in  great  measure,  and  the 
perfonner  trust  to  the  memory  of  past  emotion,  rather 
than  express  a  present  one.  She  indignantly  repelled  the 
notion,  that  with  a  truly  great  tragedian  the  operation, 
by  which  such  effects  were  produced  upon  an  audience, 
could  ever  degrade  itself  into  what  was  purely  mechanical. 
With  much  delicacy,  avoiding  to  instance  in  her  self-ex- 
T 


274  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EI.IA. 

perieuce,  slic  told  me,  tliat  so  loug  ago  as  when  she  iised 
to  pLxy  the  part  of  the  Little  Sou  to  Mrs.  Porter's  Isabella 
(I  think  it  was),  when  that  impressive  actress  has  been 
bending  over  her  in  some  heart-rending  colloquy,  she  has 
felt  real  hot  tears  come  trickling  from  her,  which  (to  use 
her  powerful  expression)  have  perfectly  scalded  her  back. 

I  am  not  quite  so  sure  that  it  was  Mrs.  Porter ;  but 
it  was  some  great  actress  of  that  day.  The  name  is  in- 
different ;  but  the  fact  of  the  scalding  tears  I  most  dis- 
tinctly remember. 

I  was  always  fond  of  the  society  of  i^layers,  and  am 
not  sure  that  an  impediment  in  my  speech  (which  cer- 
taiuly  kept  me  out  of  the  pulpit),  even  more  than  certain 
personal  disqualifications,  which  are  often  got  over  in  that 
profession,  did  not  prevent  me  at  one  time  of  life  from 
adopting  it.  I  have  had  the  honour  (I  must  ever  call  it) 
once  to  have  Ijeen  admitted  to  the  tea-table  of  Miss  Kelly. 
I  have  played  at  serious  whist  with  Mr.  Liston.  I  have 
chatted  with  ever  good-humoured  Mrs.  Charles  Kemble. 
I  have  conversed  as  friend  to  friend  with  her  accomplished 
husband.  I  have  been  indulged  with  a  classical  confer- 
ence with  Macready ;  and  with  a  sight  of  the  Player- 
picture  galleiy,  at  Mr.  Mathews's,  when  the  kind  owner, 
to  remunerate  me  for  my  love  of  the  old  actors  (whom  he 
loves  so  much),  went  over  it  with  me,  supplying  to  his 
capital  collection,  what  alone  the  artist  could  not  give 
them — voice  ;  and  their  living  motion.  Old  tones,  half- 
faded,  of  Dodd,  and  Parsons,  and  Baddeley,  have  lived 
again  for  me  at  his  bidding.     Only  Edwin  he  coidd  not 

restore  to  me.     I  have  supped  with  ;  but  I  am 

growing  a  coxcomb. 

As  I  was  about  to  say— at  the  desk  of  the  then  trea- 
surer of  the  old  Bath  Theatre — not  Diamond's — presented 
herself  the  little  Barbara  S . 

The  parents  of  Barbara  had  been  in  reputable  circum- 
stances. The  father  had  practised,  I  believe,  as  an 
apothecaiy  in  the  town.  But  his  practice,  from  causes 
which  I  feel  my  own  infirmity  too  sensibly  that  way  to 


BARBARA  S .  275 

arraign — or  perhaps  from  that  piu'e  infelicity  which  accom- 
panies some  people  in  their  walk  through  life,  and  which 
it  is  impossible  to  lay  at  the  door  of  imprudence — was 
now  reduced  to  nothing.  They  were,  in  fact,  in  the  very 
teeth  of  starvation,  Avhen  the  manager,  who  knew  and 
respected  them  in  better  days,  took  the  little  Barbara  into 
his  company. 

At  the  period  I  commenced  with,  her  slender  earnings 
were  the  sole  support  of  the  family,  including  two  yoimger 
sistera.  I  must  throw  a  veil  over  some  mortifying  cir- 
cumstances. Enough  to  say,  that  her  Saturday's  pittance 
was  the  only  chance  of  a  Svmday's  (generally  their  only) 
meal  of  meat. 

One  thing  I  will  only  mention,  that  in  some  child's 
part,  where  in  her  theatrical  character  she  was  to  sup  off 
a  roast  fowl  (0  joy  to  Barbara  !)  some  comic  actor,  who 
was  for  the  night  caterer  for  this  dainty — in  the  mis- 
guided himiour  of  his  part,  threw  over  the  dish  such  a 
quantity  of  salt  (O  grief  and  pain  of  heart  to  Barbara  !) 
that  when  he  crammed  a  portion  of  it  into  her  mouth, 
she  was  obliged  sputteringly  to  reject  it ;  and  what  with 
shame  of  her  ill-acted  part,  and  pain  of  real  appetite  at 
missing  such  a  dainty,  her  little  heart  sobbed  almost  to 
breaking,  till  a  flood  of  teare,  which  the  well-fed  spec- 
tators were  totally  unable  to  comprehend,  mercifully 
relieved  her. 

This  was  the  little  stai-ved,  meritorious  maid,  who 
stood  before  old  Kavenscroft,  the  treasurer,  for  her  Satur- 
day's payment. 

Kavenscroft  was  a  man,  I  have  heard  many  old  thea- 
trical people  besides  herself  say,  of  all  men  least  calcidated 
for  a  treasurer.  He  had  no  head  for  accounts,  paid  away 
at  random,  kept  scarce  any  books,  and  summing  up  at 
the  week's  end,  if  he  found  himself  a  pound  or  so  deficient, 
blest  himself  that  it  was  no  worse. 

Now  Barbara's  weekly  stipend  was  a  bare  half-guinea. 
— By  mistake  he  popped  into  her  hand — a  whole  one. 

Barbara  tripped  away. 


276  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

She  was  entirely  imcouscioiis  at  first  of  the  mistake  . 
God  knows,  Ravenscroft  would  never  have  discovered  it. 

But  when  she  had  got  down  to  the  first  of  those  un- 
couth landing-places,  she  became  sensible  of  an  unusual 
weight  of  metal  pressing  in  her  little  hand. 

Now  mark  the  dilemma. 

She  was  by  nature  a  good  cliild.  From  her  parents 
and  those  about  her,  she  had  imbibed  no  contrary  influ- 
ence. But  then  they  had  taught  her  nothing.  Poor 
men's  smoky  cabins  are  not  always  porticoes  of  moral 
philosoijliy.  This  little  maid  had  no  instinct  to  evil,  but 
then  she  might  be  said  to  have  no  fixed  principle.  She 
had  heard  honesty  commended,  but  never  dreamed  of  its 
application  to  herself  She  thought  of  it  as  something 
which  concerned  grown-up  people,  men  and  women.  She 
had  never  known  temptation,  or  thought  of  preparing 
resistance  against  it. 

Her  first  impulse  was  to  go  back  to  the  old  treasurer, 
and  explain  to  him  his  bhmder.  He  was  already  so  con- 
fused with  age,  besides  a  natural  want  of  punctuality, 
that  she  would  have  had  some  difticidty  in  making  him 
understand  it.  She  saw  that  in  an  instant.  And  then 
it  was  such  a  bit  of  money !  and  then  the  image  of  a 
larger  allowance  of  butcher's  meat  on  their  table  the  next 
day  came  across  her,  till  her  little  eyes  glistened,  and  her 
mouth  moistened.  But  then  Mr.  Ravenscroft  had  always 
been  so  good-natured,  had  stood  her  friend  behind  the 
scenes,  and  even  recommended  her  promotion  to  some  of 
her  little  jjarts.  But  again  the  old  man  was  reputed  to 
be  worth  a  world  of  money.  He  was  supposed  to  have 
fifty  pounds  a-ycar  clear  of  the  theatre.  And  then  came 
staring  upon  her  the  figm-es  of  her  little  stockingless  and 
shoeless  sisters.  And  when  she  looked  at  her  own  neat 
white  cotton  stockings,  which  her  situation  at  the  theatre 
had  made  it  indispensable  for  her  motlier  to  provide  for 
her,  with  hard  straining  and  pinching  from  the  fixmily 
stock,  and  thought  how  glad  she  should  be  to  cover  their 
poor  feet  with  the  same — and  how  then  they  coidd  ac- 


BARBARA  S- 


compauy  her  to  rehearsals,  which  they  had  hitherto  been 
precluded  from  doing,  by  reason  of  their  unfashionable 
attire, — in  these  thoughts  she  reached  the  second  landing- 
place — the  second,  I  mean,  from  the  top — for  there  was 
still  another  left  to  traverse. 

Now  virtue  support  Barbara  ! 

And  that  never-failing  friend  did  step  in— for  at  that 
moment  a  strength  not  her  own,  I  have  heard  her  say, 
was  revealed  to  her — a  reason  above  reasoning — and  -with- 
out her  owTi  agency,  as  it  seemed  (for  she  never  felt  her 
feet  to  move),  she  found  herself  transported  back  to  the 
individual  desk  she  had  just  quitted,  and  her  hand  in  the 
old  hand  of  Ravenscroft,  who  in  silence  took  back  the 
refimded  treasure,  and  who  had  been  sitting  (good  man) 
insensible  to  the  lapse  of  minutes,  which  to  her  were 
anxious  ages,  and  from  that  moment  a  deep  peace  fell 
upon  her  heart,  and  she  knew  the  quality  of  honesty. 

A  year  or  two's  imrepining  application  to  her  profes- 
sion brightened  up  the  feet  and  the  prospects  of  her  little 
sisters,  set  the  whole  family  upon  their  legs  again,  and 
released  her  from  the  difficulty  of  discussing  moral  dogmas 
upon  a  landing-place. 

I  have  heard  her  say  that  it  was  a  smprise,  not  much 
short  of  mortification  to  her,  to  see  the  coolness  with 
which  the  old  man  pocketed  the  difference,  which  had 
caused  her  such  mortal  throes. 

This  anecdote  of  herself  I  had  in  the  year  1800,  from 
the  mouth  of  the  late  Mrs.  Crawford,^  then  sixty-seven 
years  of  age  (she  died  soon  after)  ;  and  to  her  struggles 
upon  this  childish  occasion  I  have  sometimes  ventiu-ed  to 
think  her  indebted  for  that  power  of  rending  the  heart  in 
the  representation  of  conflicting  emotions,  for  which  in 
after  years  she  was  considered  as  little  inferior  (if  at  all 
so  in  the  part  of  Lady  Randolph)  even  to  Mrs.  Siddons. 

^  The  maiden  name  of  this  lady  was  Street,  which  she  changed, 
by  successive  maiTiages,  for  those  of  Dancer,  BaiTy,  and  Crawford. 
She  was  Mrs.  Crawford,  a  third  time  a  widow,  when  I  knew  her. 


278  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY. 

IN  A  LETTEU  TO  U K ,   ESQ. 

TirouGH  in  some  points  of  doctrine,  and  perhaps  of  dis- 
cipline, I  am  diffident  of  lending  a  perfect  assent  to  that 
church  which  you  have  so  worthily  historified,  yet  may 
the  ill  time  never  come  to  me,  when  with  a  chilled  heart 
or  a  portion  of  irreverent  sentiment,  I  shall  enter  her 
beautifid  and  time -hallowed  Edifices.  Judge,  then,  of 
my  mortification  when,  after  attending  the  choral  anthems 
of  last  Wednesday  at  Westminster,  and  being  desii'ous  of 
renewing  my  acquaintance,  after  lapsed  years,  with  the 
tombs  and  antiquities  there,  I  found  myself  excluded ; 
turned  out,  Uke  a  dog,  or  some  profone  person,  into  the 
common  street,  with  feelings  not  very  congenial  to  the 
place,  or  to  the  solemn  service  which  I  had  been  listening 
to.     It  was  a  jar  after  that  music. 

You  had  your  education  at  Westminster ;  and  doubtless 
among  those  dim  aisles  and  cloisters,  you  must  have 
gathered  much  of  that  devotional  feeling  in  those  yomig 
years,  on  which  your  purest  mind  feeds  still— and  may  it 
feed  !  The  antiquarian  spirit,  strong  in  you,  and  grace- 
fully blending  ever  with  the  religious,  may  have  been 
sown  in  you  among  those  wrecks  of  splendid  mortality. 
You  owe  it  to  the  place  of  your  education ;  you  owe  it  to 
your  learned  fondness  for  the  architecture  of  yoirr  an- 
cestors ;  you  owe  it  to  the  venerableness  of  your  ecclesi- 
astical establishment,  which  is  daily  lessened  and  called 
in  question  through  these  practices — to  speak  aloud  yoiu- 
sense  of  them  ;  never  to  desist  raising  your  voice  against 
them,  till  they  be  totally  done  away  with  and  abolished ; 
till  the  doors  of  Westminster  Abbey  be  no  longer  closed 
against  the  decent,  though  low-in-piu"se,  enthusiast,  or 
blameless  devotee,  wlio  must  connnit  an  injury  ;ig;iinst 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY.  279 

his  family  economy,  if  he  would  be  indulged  with  a  bare 
admission  within  its  walls.  You  owe  it  to  the  decencies 
which  you  wish  to  see  maintained  in  its  impressive  services, 
that  oiu"  cathedral  be  no  longer  an  object  of  inspection  to 
the  poor  at  those  times  only,  in  which  they  must  roll  from 
their  attendance  on  the  worship  eveiy  minute  which  they 
can  bestow  upon  the  fabric.  In  vain  the  public  prints 
have  taken  up  this  subject, — in  vain  such  poor,  nameless 
writers  as  myself  express  their  indigTiation.  A  word  from 
you,  sir," — a  hint  in  yom*  Joiu-ual — would  be  suflBcient  to 
fling  open  the  doors  of  the  Beautifid  Temple  again,  as  we 
can  remember  them  when  we  were  boys.  At  that  time 
of  life,  what  woidd  the  imaginative  facidty  (such  as  it  is) 
in  both  of  us,  have  suffered,  if  the  entrance  to  so  much 
reflection  had  been  obstmcted  by  the  demand  of  so  much 
silver  ! — If  we  had  scraped  it  up  to  gain  an  occasional 
admission  (as  we  certainly  shoidd  have  done),  woidd  the 
sight  of  those  old  tombs  have  been  as  impressive  to  us 
(whde  we  have  been  weighing  anxiously  prudence  against 
sentiment)  as  when  the  gates  stood  open  as  those  of  the 
adjacent  park ;  when  we  could  walk  in  at  any  time,  as 
the  mood  brought  us,  for  a  shorter  or  longer  time,  as  that 
lasted  1  Is  the  being  shown  over  a  place  the  same  as 
silently  for  ourselves  detecting  the  genius  of  it  1  In  no 
part  of  our  beloved  Abbey  now  can  a  person  find  entrance 
(out  of  ser\nce-tmie)  under  the  sum  of  two  shillings.  The 
rich  and  the  great  will  smde  at  the  anti-climax,  presimied 
to  lie  in  these  two  short  words.  But  you  can  tell  them, 
sir,  how  much  cj^uiet  worth,  how  much  capacity  for  en- 
larged feeling,  how  much  taste  and  genius,  may  coexist, 
especially  in  youth,  with  a  purse  incompetent  to  this  de- 
mand. A  respected  friend  of  oru's,  during  his  late  visit  to 
the  metropolis,  presented  himself  for  admission  to  St. 
Paid's.  At  the  same  time  a  decently-clothed  man,  with 
as  decent  a  wife  and  child,  were  bargaining  for  the  same 
indidgence.  The  price  was  only  two-pence  each  person. 
The  poor  but  decent  man  hesitated,  desirous  to  go  in  ;  but 
there  were  three  of  them,  and  he  turned  away  reluctantly. 


280  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Perhaps  he  wished  to  liavc  seen  the  tomb  of  Nelson. 
Perhaps  the  Interior  of  the  Cathedral  was  his  object.  But 
in  the  state  of  liis  finances,  even  sixpence  might  reasonably 
seem  too  much.  Tell  the  Aristocracy  of  the  country  (no 
man  can  do  it  more  impressively) ;  instruct  them  of  what 
value  these  insignificant  pieces  of  money,  these  minims 
to  their  sight,  may  be  to  their  humbler  brethren.  Shame 
these  Sellers  out  of  the  Temple.  Stifle  not  the  suggestions 
of  your  better  nature  with  the  pretext,  that  an  indiscri- 
minate admission  would  expose  the  Tombs  to  violation. 
Remember  your  boy-days.  Did  you  ever  see,  or  hear,  of 
a  mob  in  the  Abbey,  while  it  was  free  to  all  ?  Do  the 
rabble  come  there,  or  trouble  their  heads  about  such 
speculations  ?  It  is  all  that  you  can  do  to  drive  them 
into  your  churches  ;  they  do  not  voluntarily  oft'er  them- 
selves. They  have,  alas  !  no  passion  for  antiquities  ;  for 
tomb  of  king  or  prelate,  sage  or  poet.  If  they  had,  they 
would  be  no  longer  the  rabble. 

For  forty  years  that  I  have  known  the  Fabric,  the  only 
well -attested  charge  of  violation  adduced  has  been — a 
ridiculous  dismemberment  committed  upon  the  effigy  of 
that  amiable  spy.  Major  Andrd.  And  is  it  for  this — the 
wanton  mischief  of  some  school-boy,  fired  perhaps  with 
raw  notions  of  Transatlantic  Freedom  —  or  the  remote 
possibility  of  such  a  mischief  occurring  again,  so  easily  to 
be  prevented  by  stationing  a  constable  within  the  walls, 
if  the  vergers  are  incompetent  to  the  duty — is  it  upon 
such  wretched  pretences  that  the  people  of  England  are 
made  to  pay  a  new  Peter's  Pence,  so  long  abrogated  ;  or 
must  content  themselves  with  contemplating  the  ragged 
Exterior  of  their  Cathedral'?  The  mischief  was  done 
about  the  time  that  you  were  a  scholar  there.  Do  you 
know  anything  about  the  unfortunate  relic  ? — 


MUCUS  REDIVIVUS,  281 


AMICUS  EEDIVIVUS. 

Where  were  ye,  Nymphs,  wlieu  the  remorseless  deep 
Closed  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Lycidas  ? 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  experienced  a  stranger  sen- 
sation than  on  seeing  my  old  friend,  G.  D.,  who  had  been 
paying  me  a  morning  visit,  a  few  Sundays  back,  at  my 
cottage  at  Islington,  upon  taking  leave,  instead  of  turning 
down  the  right-hand  path  by  which  he  had  entered — 
with  staff  in  hand,  and  at  noonday,  deliberately  march 
right  forwards  into  the  midst  of  the  stream  that  runs  by 
us,  and  totally  disajtijcar. 

A  spectacle  like  this  at  dusk  would  have  been  appalling 
enough  ;  but  in  the  broad,  open  daylight,  to  witness  such 
an  unreserved  motion  towards  self-destmction  in  a  valued 
friend,  took  from  me  all  power  of  speculation. 

How  I  fomid  my  feet  I  know  not.  Consciousness  was 
quite  gone.  Some  spirit,  not  my  own,  whirled  me  to  the 
spot.  I  remember  nothing  but  the  silvery  apparition  of 
a  good  white  head  emerging;  nigh  wdiich  a  staff  (the 
hand  unseen  that  wielded  it)  pointed  upwards,  as  feeling 
for  the  skies.  In  a  moment  (if  tune  was  in  that  time) 
he  was  on  my  shoulders,  and  I — freighted  with  a  load 
more  jirecious  than  liis  Avho  bore  Anchises. 

And  here  I  cannot  but  do  justice  to  the  officious  zeal 
of  simdry  passers-by,  who,  albeit  arriving  a  little  too  late 
to  participate  in  the  honom's  of  the  rescue,  in  philan- 
thropic shoals  came  thronging  to  communicate  their 
advice  as  to  the  recovery ;  prescribing  variously  the 
application,  or  non-application,  of  salt,  etc.,  to  the  person 
of  the  patient.  Life,  meantime,  was  ebbing  f;ist  away, 
amidst  the  stifle  of  conflicting  judgments,  when  one, 
more  sagacious  than  the  rest,  by  a  bright  thought,  pro- 
posed sending  for  the  Doctor.  Trite  as  the  counsel  was, 
and  impossible,  as  one  should  think,  to  be  missed  on, — 


282  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EFJA. 

shall  I  confess  1 — in  this  emergency  it  was  to  me  as  if  an 
Angel  had  spoken.  Great  previous  exertions — and  mine 
liad  not  lx«n  inconsiderable — are  commonly  followed  by  a 
del)ility  of  purpose.  This  was  a  moment  of  irresolution. 
MoNocuLUS — for  so,  in  default  of  catching  his  true 
name,  I  choose  to  designate  the  medical  gentleman  who 
now  appeared — is  a  grave,  middle-aged  person,  who, 
without  having  studied  at  tlie  college,  or  truclded  to  the 
pedantry  of  a  diploma,  hath  cmjjloyed  a  great  portion  of 
his  valuable  time  in  experimental  processes  upon  the 
bodies  of  unfortunate  fellow-creatures,  in  whom  the  vital 
spark,  to  mere  vulgar  thinking,  would  seem  extinct  and 
lost  for  ever.  He  omitteth  no  occasion  of  obtruding  his 
services,  from  a  case  of  common  surfeit  suffocation  to  the 
igno1:)ler  olistructions,  sometimes  induced  by  a  too  wilful 
application  of  the  })lant  cannabis  outwardly.  But  though 
he  declineth  not  altogether  these  drier  extinctions,  his 
occupation  tendeth,  for  the  most  part,  to  water-practice  ; 
for  the  convenience  of  which,  he  hath  judiciously  fixed 
his  quarters  near  the  grand  repository  of  the  stream 
mentioned,  where  day  and  niglit,  from  his  little  watch- 
tower,  at  the  Middleton's  Head,  he  listeneth  to  detect 
the  wrecks  of  drowned  mortality — partly,  as  he  saith,  to 
be  upon  the  spot — and  partly,  because  the  liquids  which 
he  useth  to  prescribe  to  himself  and  his  patients,  on  these 
distressing  occasions,  are  ordinarily  more  conveniently  to 
be  found  at  these  common  hostelries  than  in  the  shops 
and  phials  of  the  apothecaries.  His  ear  hath  arrived  to 
such  finesse  by  practice,  that  it  is  reported  he  can  dis- 
tinguish a  plunge,  at  half  a  furlong  distance ;  and  can 
tell  if  it  be  casual  or  deliberate.  He  wearetli  a  medal, 
suspended  over  a  suit,  originally  of  a  sad  brown,  l)ut 
which,  by  time  and  frequency  of  nightly  divings,  has 
been  dinged  into  a  true  professional  sable.  He  passeth 
by  the  name  of  Doctor,  and  is  remarkable  for  wanting 
his  left  eye.  His  remedy— after  a  sufiicient  application 
of  warm  blankets,  friction,  etc.,  is  a  simple  tiunbler,  or 
moi'o,  of  the  purest  Cognac,  with  water,  made  as  hot  as 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS.  283 

the  convalescent  can  bear  it.  Where  he  findeth,  as  in 
the  case  of  my  friend,  a  squeamish  subject,  he  con- 
descendeth  to  be  the  taster ;  and  showeth,  by  his  own 
example,  the  innocuous  nature  of  the  prescription.  No- 
thing can  be  more  kind  or  encom-aging  than  this  pro- 
cedure. It  addeth  confidence  to  the  patient,  to  see  his 
medical  adviser  go  hand  in  hand  with  himself  in  the 
remedy.  When  the  doctor  swalloweth  his  own  draught, 
what  peevish  invalid  can  refuse  to  pledge  him  in  the 
potion  1  In  fine,  Monoculus  is  a  humane,  sensible  man, 
who,  for  a  slender  pittance,  scarce  enough  to  sustain  life, 
is  content  to  wear  it  out  in  the  endeavom-  to  save  the 
lives  of  others — his  pretensions  so  moderate,  that  with 
difiicidty  I  could  i)ress  a  croAvn  upon  him,  for  the  price  of 
restormg  the  existence  of  such  an  invaluable  creatm'e  to 
society  as  G.  D. 

It  was  pleasant  to  observe  the  effect  of  the  subsiding 
alarm  upon  the  nerves  of  the  dear  absentee.  It  seemed 
to  have  given  a  shake  to  memory,  calling  up  notice  after 
notice,  of  all  the  providential  deliverances  he  had  ex- 
perienced in  the  course  of  his  long  and  innocent  life. 
Sitting  up  on  my  couch — my  couch  which,  naked  and 
void  of  furniture  hitherto,  for  the  salutaiy  repose  which 
it  administered,  shall  be  honoured  with  costly  valance, 
at  some  price,  and  henceforth  be  a  state-bed  at  Colebrook, 
— he  discoursed  of  marvellous  escajjes — by  carelessness 
of  nurses — by  pails  of  gelid,  and  kettles  of  the  boiling 
element,  in  infancy — by  orchard  pranks,  and  snapping 
twigs,  in  schoollwy  frolics — by  descent  of  tiles  at  Trump- 
ington,  and  of  heavier  tomes  at  Pembroke — by  studious 
watchings,  inducing  frightful  vigilance — by  want,  and 
the  fear  of  want,  and  all  the  sore  throbbings  of  the 
learned  head. — Anon,  he  would  burst  out  into  little  frag- 
ments of  chanting — of  songs  long  ago — ends  of  deliver- 
ance hymns,  not  remembered  before  since  childhood,  but 
coming  up  now,  when  his  heart  was  made  tender  as  a 
child's — for  the  tremor  cordis,  in  the  retrospect  of  a 
recent  deliverance,  as  in   a  case  of  impending  danger, 


284  TTTE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

acting  upon  an  innocent  heart,  will  produce  a  self-tender- 
ness, which  we  should  do  ill  to  christen  cowardice ;  and 
Shakspeare,  in  the  latter  crisis,  has  made  his  good  Sir 
Hugh  to  remember  the  sitting  by  Babylon,  and  to  mutter 
of  shallow  rivers. 

Waters  of  Sir  Hugh  Middleton — wliat  a  spark  you 
were  like  to  have  extinguished  for  ever  !  Your  salu1)rious 
streams  to  this  City,  for  now  near  two  centui-ies,  would 
hardly  have  atoned  for  what  you  were  in  a  moment  wash- 
ing away.  Mockery  of  a  river — liquid  artifice — wretched 
conduit !  henceforth  rank  with  canals  and  sluggish  aque- 
ducts. Was  it  for  this  that,  smit  in  boyhood  with  the 
explorations  of  that  Abyssinian  traveller,  I  paced  the 
vales  of  Amwell  to  explore  yoiu-  tributary  springs,  to 
trace  your  salutary  waters  sparkling  through  green  Hert- 
fordshire, and  cultm-ed  Enfield  parks  1 — Ye  have  no  swans 
— no  Naiads — no  river  God — or  did  the  benevolent  hoary 
aspect  of  my  friend  tempt  ye  to  suck  him  in,  that  ye  also 
might  have  the  tutelary  genius  of  your  waters  ■? 

Had  he  been  drowned  in  Cam,  there  woidd  have  been 
some  consonancy  in  it ;  but  what  willows  had  ye  to  wave 
and  rustle  over  his  moist  sepidture  1 — or,  having  no  name, 
besides  that  unmeaning  assumption  of  eternal  novity,  did 
ye  think  to  get  one  by  the  noble  prize,  and  henceforth  to 
be  termed  the  Stream  Dyerian  1 

And  could  such  spacious  virtue  find  a  grave 
Beneath  the  iraposthuined  bubble  of  a  wave  ? 

I  protest,  George,  you  shall  not  venture  out  again — 
no,  not  1jy  daylight — witliout  a  sufficient  pair  of  spectacles 
— in  your  musing  moods  especially.  Your  absence  of 
mind  we  have  borne,  till  your  presence  of  body  came  to 
be  called  in  question  by  it.  You  shall  not  go  wandering 
into  Euripus  with  Aristotle,  if  we  can  help  it.  Fie,  man, 
to  tm-n  dipper  at  your  years,  after  your  many  tracts  in 
favour  of  sprinkling  only  ! 

I  l)ave  nothing  but  water  in  my  head  o'nights  since 
this  friuhtful  accident.     Sometimes  I  am  with  Clarence 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS.  285 

in  his  dreaui.  At  others,  I  behold  Christian  beginning 
to  sink,  and  crying  out  to  his  good  brother  Hopeful  (that 
is,  to  me),  "  I  sink  in  deep  waters  ;  the  billows  go  over 
my  head,  all  the  waves  go  over  me.  Selah."  Then  I 
have  before  me  Palinunis,  just  letting  go  the  steerage. 
I  cry  out  too  late  to  save.  Next  follow — a  mournful 
procession — suicidal  faces,  saved  against  their  will  from 
(b-owning ;  dolefidly  trailing  a  length  of  reluctant  grate- 
fidness,  with  ropy  weeds  pendent  from  locks  of  watchet 
hue — constrained  Lazari — Pluto's  half-subj  ects — stolen 
fees  from  the  grave — bilking  Charon  of  his  fare.  At 
their  head  Arion — or  is  it  G.  D.  1 — in  his  singing  gar- 
ments marcheth  singly,  with  haip  in  hand,  and  votive 
garland,  which  Machaon  (or  Dr.  Hawes)  snatcheth  straight, 
intending  to  suspend  it  to  the  stem  God  of  Sea.  Then 
follow  dismal  streams  of  Lethe,  in  which  the  half-drenched 
on  earth  are  constrained  to  drowTi  downright,  by  wharfs 
where  Ophelia  twice  acts  her  muddy  death. 

And,  doubtless,  there  is  some  notice  in  that  invisible 
world  when  one  of  us  approacheth  (as  my  friend  did  so 
lately)  to  their  inexorable  precincts.  When  a  soid  knocks 
once,  t-v\ice,  at  Death's  door,  the  sensation  aroused  within 
the  palace  must  be  considerable ;  and  the  grim  Feature, 
by  modem  science  so  often  dispossessed  of  his  prey,  must 
have  learned  by  this  time  to  pity  Tantalus. 

A  pidse  assuredly  was  felt  along  the  line  of  the  Elysian 
shades,  when  the  near  arrival  of  G.  D.  was  announced  by 
no  equivocal  indications.  From  their  seats  of  Asphodel 
arose  the  gentler  and  the  graver  ghosts — poet,  or  historian 
• — of  Grecian  or  of  Roman  lore — to  crown  with  unfading 
chaplets  the  half-finished  love-laboiu-s  of  their  unwearied 
scholiast.  Him  IMarkland  expected — him  Tyrwhitt  hoped 
to  encounter — him  the  sweet  lyrist  of  Peter  House,  whom 
he  had  barely  seen  upon  earth,  ^  with  newest  airs  prepared 

to  greet ;  and  patron  of  the  gentle  Christ's  boy, — 

who  shovdd  have  been  his  patron  through  life — the  mild 

Askew,  with  longing  aspirations  leaned  foremost  from  his 

'  Geaium  tantum  vidit. 


286  TJIE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

venerable  -^sciilapian  chair,  to  welcome  into  that  happy 
company  the  matured  virtues  of  the  man,  whose  tender 
scions  in  the  boy  he  himself  upon  earth  had  so  prophetic- 
ally fed  and  watered. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY. 

Sydney's  Sonnets — I  speak  of  the  best  of  them — are 
among  the  very  best  of  their  sort.  They  fixll  below  the 
plahi  moral  dignity,  the  sanctity,  and  high  yet  modest 
spirit  of  self-approval,  of  Milton,  in  his  compositions  of  a 
similar  structure.  They  are  in  truth  wliat  Milton,  cen- 
suring the  Arcadia,  says  of  that  work  (to  which  they  are 
a  sort  of  after-tune  or  application),  "  vain  and  amatorious  " 
enough,  yet  the  things  in  their  kind  (as  he  confesses  to 
be  true  of  the  romance)  may  be  "full  of  worth  and  wit." 
They  savour  of  the  Courtier,  it  must  be  allowed,  and  not 
of  the  Commonwealthsman.  But  Milton  was  a  Courtier 
when  he  wrote  the  Masciue  at  Ludlow  Castle,  and  still 
more  a  Corn-tier  when  he  composed  the  Arcades.  When 
the  national  struggle  was  to  begin,  he  becomingly  cast 
these  vanities  behind  him ;  and  if  the  order  of  time  had 
thrown  Sir  Philij)  upon  the  crisis  which  preceded  the 
revolution,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have 
acted  the  same  part  in  that  emergency,  which  has  glorified 
the  name  of  a  later  Sydney.  He  did  not  want  for  jjlain- 
ness  or  boldness  of  spirit.  His  letter  on  the  French 
match  may  testify  he  could  speak  his  mind  freely  to 
Prin(;es.     The  times  did  not  call  him  to  the  scaftbld. 

The  Sonnets  which  we  oftenest  call  to  mind  of  Milton 
were  the  compositions  of  his  matirrcst  years.  Those  of 
Sydney,  which  I  am  about  to  produce,  were  written  in 
the  very  heyday  of  his  blood.  Tlicy  are  stuck  full  of 
amorous  fancies — for-fetched  conceits,  befitting  his  occu- 
pation;   for  True  Love  thinks  no  laboiu*  to  send  out 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  Sill  Pill  UP  SYDNEY.         287 

Thoughts  upon  the  vast  and  more  tlian  Indian  voyages, 
to  bring  home  rich  pearls,  outlandish  wealth,  gimis, 
jewels,  spicery,  to  sacrifice  in  self-dei^reciating  simili- 
tudes, as  shadows  of  true  amiabilities  in  the  Beloved. 
We  must  be  Lovers — or  at  least  the  cooling  touch  of 
time,  the  ciraim  23rcecoixlia  frigus,  must  not  have  so 
damped  oiu-  faculties,  as  to  take  away  our  recollection 
that  we  were  once  so — before  we  can  duly  ap])reciate  the 
glorious  vanities  and  gracefid  hyjierboles  of  the  passion. 
The  images  which  lie  before  our  feet  (though  by  some 
accounted  the  only  natural)  are  least  natm-al  for  the  high 
Syduean  love  to  express  its  fancies  by.  They  may  serve 
for  the  loves  of  Tibullus,  or  the  dear  Author  of  the 
Schoohuistress ;  for  passions  that  creep  and  whine  in 
Elegies  and  Pastoral  Ballads.  I  am  sure  Milton  never 
loved  at  this  rate.  I  am  afraid  some  of  his  addresses 
{ad  Leonoram  I  mean)  have  rather  erred  on  the  farther 
side ;  and  that  the  poet  came  not  much  short  of  a 
religious  indecorum,  when  he  could  thus  apostrophize  a 
singing-girl : — 

Augelus  luiicuique  suns  (sic  credite  geutes) 

Obtigit  ffitliereis  ales  ab  ordiuibiis. 
Quid  mirum,  Leouora,  tibi  si  gloria  major, 

Nam  tua  prajsentem  vox  sonat  ipsa  Deiiiii  ? 
Aiit  Deiis,  aut  vacui  certe  mens  tertia  ca3li 

Per  tua  secreto  guttura  serpit  ageus  ; 
Serpit  ageiis,  facilisque  docet  niortalia  corda 

Sensim  immortali  assuescere  posse  sono. 

QUOD  SI  CUNCTA  QUIDEM  DeuS  EST,  PER  CUNCTAQUE  FDSUS, 

In  te  una  locjuitur,  c^etera  mutds  habet. 

This  is  loving  in  a  strange  fashion ;  and  it  requires 
some  candour  of  construction  (besides  the  slight  darken- 
ing of  a  dead  language)  to  cast  a  veil  over  the  ugly 
appearance  of  something  very  like  blasphemy  in  the  last 
two  verses.  I  think  the  Lover  would  have  been  stag- 
gered if  he  had  gone  about  to  express  the  same  tliought 
in  English.  I  am  sure  Sydney  has  no  flights  like  this. 
His  extravaganzas  do  not  strike  at  the  sky,  though  he 


288  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EUA. 

takes  leave  tu  adopt  the  pale  Diaii  into  a  fellowship  with 
his  mortal  passions. 


With  how  sad  steps,  0  Moon,  thou  climh'st  the  skies 

How  silently  ;  and  with  how  wan  a  face  ! 

What  !  may  it  be,  that  even  in  heavenly  place 

That  busy  Archer  his  sharji  arrow  tries  ? 

Sure,  if  that  long-with-love-acquainted  eyes 

Can  judge  of  love,  thou  feel'st  a  lover's  case  ; 

I  read  it  in  thy  looks  ;  thy  languisht  gi'ace 

To  nie,  that  feel  the  like,  thy  state  descries. 

Then,  even  of  fellowship,  O  Moon,  tell  me. 

Is  constant  love  deera'd  there  but  want  of  wit  ? 

Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be  ? 

Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 

Those  lovers  scorn,  whom  that  love  doth  jiossess  ? 

Do  they  call  virtue  there — ungratefulness! 

The  last  line  of  this  poem  is  a  little  obscured  by 
transposition.  He  means,  Do  they  call  ungratefidness 
there  a  virtue  ? 


Come,  Sleep,  0  Sleeji,  the  certain  knot  of  peace. 
The  baiting-place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  woe. 
The  poor  man's  wealtli,  the  prisoner's  release, 
The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low  ; 
With  shield  of  proof  shield  me  from  out  the  jirease^ 
Of  those  fierce  darts  despair  at  me  doth  throw  ; 

0  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease  : 

1  will  good  tribute  pay  if  thou  do  so. 

Take  thou  of  me  sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed  ; 
A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 
And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  by  right, 
Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me, 
Livelier  than  elsewhere,  Stella's  image  see. 


The  curious  wits,  seeing  dull  pensiveness 
Bewray  itself  in  my  long-settled  eyes, 

^  Press. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.         289 

Wlience  those  same  fumes  of  melancholy  rise, 
With  idle  pains,  and  luissing  aim,  do  guess. 
Some,  that  know  how  my  spring  I  did  address, 
Deem  that  my  iliise  some  fruit  of  knowledge  plies. 
Others,  because  the  Prince  my  service  tries, 
Think,  that  I  think  state  errors  to  redress  ; 
But  harder  judges  judge,  ambition's  rage, 
Scourge  of  itself,  still  climbing  slii)pery  place, 
Holds  my  young  brain  captiv'd  in  golden  cage. 
O  fools,  or  over-wise  !  alas,  the  race 
Of  all  my  thoughts  hath  neither  stoji  nor  start, 
But  ouly  Stella's  eyes,  and  Stella's  heart. 


Because  I  oft  in  dark  abstracted  guise 

Seem  most  alone  in  greatest  company. 

With  dearth  of  words,  or  answers  quite  awrj% 

To  them  that  would  make  sijeech  of  speech  arise  ; 

They  deem,  and  of  their  doom  the  rumour  flies, 

That  poison  foul  of  bubbling  Piide  doth  lie 

So  in  my  swelling  breast,  that  only  I 

Fawn  on  mj'self,  and  others  do  despise ; 

Yet  Pride,  I  think,  doth  not  my  soul  possess, 

Which  looks  too  oft  in  his  untiattering  glass  ; 

But  one  worse  fault — AvMtion — I  confess. 

That  makes  me  oft  my  best  friends  overpass. 

Unseen,  unheard — while  Thought  to  highest  place 

Bends  all  his  powers,  even  unto  Stella's  grace. 


Having  this  day,  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance, 
Guided  so  well  that  I  obtaineil  the  prize. 
Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes. 
And  of  some  sent  from  that  sicect  enemy, — France  ; 
Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance  ; 
Townsfolk  my  strength  ;  a  daintier  judge  applies 
His  praise  to  sleight,  which  from  good  use  doth  rise 
Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance  ; 
Others,  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 
My  blood  from  them,  who  did  excel  in  this. 
Think  Nature  me  a  man  of  arms  did  make. 
How  far  they  shot  awry  !  the  true  cause  is, 
Stella  look'd  on,  and  from  her  heavenly  face 
Sent  forth  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race, 
U 


290  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 


In  martial  sports  I  had  my  cuiniing  tried, 
And  yet  to  break  more  staves  did  iiie  address, 
Wliile  witli  tlie  peojile's  shonts  (I  ninst  confess) 
Youth,  luclv,  and  praise,  even  fill'd  my  veins  with  pride- 
When  C'ui)id  liaving  me  (his  slave)  descried 
In  Mars'  livery,  prancing  in  the  press, 
'  Wliat  now.  Sir  Fool  ! "  said  he  ;  "  I  would  no  less  : 
Loolc  here,  I  say."     I  look'd,  and  Stklla  spied, 
Wlio  hard  by  made  a  window  send  forth  light. 
My  heart  then  quaked,  then  dazzled  were  mine  eyes  ; 
One  hand  forgot  to  rule,  tli'  other  to  figlit ; 
Nor  trumpet's  sound  I  heard,  nor  friendly  cries. 
My  foe  came  on,  and  beat  the  air  for  me — 
Till  that  her  blush  made  me  my  shame  to  see. 


No  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try  ; 

0  give  my  passions  leave  to  run  their  race  ; 
Let  Fortune  lay  on  me  her  worst  disgrace  ; 

Let  folk  o'ercharged  with  brain  against  me  cry  ; 
Let  clouds  bedim  my  face,  break  in  mine  eye  ; 
Let  nie  no  steps,  but  of  lost  labour,  trace  ; 
Let  all  the  earth  with  scorn  recount  my  case — 
But  do  not  will  me  from  my  love  to  Hy. 

1  do  not  envy  Aristotle's  wit, 

Nor  do  aspire  to  Cpesar's  bleeding  fame  ; 
Nor  aught  do  care,  though  some  above  me  sit ; 
Nor  hope,  nor  wish,  another  course  to  frame. 
But  that  which  once  may  win  thy  cruel  heart : 
Thou  art  my  wit,  and  thou  my  virtue  art. 


Love  still  a  boy,  and  oft  a  wanton,  is, 
School'd  only  by  his  mother's  tender  eye  ; 
What  wonder,  then,  if  he  his  lesson  miss, 
When  for  so  soft  a  rod  dear  play  he  try  ? 
And  yet  my  Star,  because  a  sugar'd  kiss 
In  sport  I  .suck'd,  while  she  asleep  did  lie, 
Doth  lour,  nay  chide,  nay  threat,  for  only  tliis. 
Sweet,  it  was  saucy  Love,  not  humble  I. 
But  no  'sense  serves  ;  slie  makes  her  wrath  appear 
In  Beauty's  throne — see  now  who  dares  come  near 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.     .    291 

Those  scarlet  judges,  tlireat'uing  bloody  pain  ? 
0  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face 
Anger  invests  witli  snch  a  lovelj'  grace. 
That  auger's  self  I  needs  must  kiss  again. 


I  never  drank  of  Aganippe  well, 

Nor  ever  did  in  shade  of  Tempe  sit. 

And  Muses  scorn  with  vulgar  brains  to  dwell ; 

Poor  lay-man  I,  for  sacred  rites  initit. 

Some  do  I  hear  of  Poet's  fury  tell. 

But  (God  wot)  wot  not  what  they  mean  by  it ; 

And  this  I  swear  by  blackest  brook  of  hell, 

I  am  no  pick-purse  of  another's  wit. 

How  falls  it  then,  that  with  so  smooth  an  ease 

My  thoughts  I  speak,  and  what  I  speak  doth  flow 

In  verse,  and  that  my  verse  best  wits  doth  please  ? 

Guess  me  the  cause — what  is  it  thus  ? — fye,  no  ! 

Or  so  ? — much  less.     How  then  ?  siire  thus  it  is, 

My  lips  are  sweet,  inspir'd  with  Stella's  kiss. 


Of  all  the  kings  that  ever  hero  did  reign, 
Edward,  named  Fourth,  as  first  in  praise  I  name. 
Not  for  his  fair  outside,  nor  well-lined  brain — 
Although  less  gifts  imp  feathers  oft  on  Fame. 
Nor  that  he  could,  young-wise,  wise-valiant,  frame 
His  sire's  revenge,  join'd  with  a  kingdom's  gain  ; 
And,  gain'd  by  Mars  could  yet  mad  Mars  so  tame. 
That  Balance  weigh'd  what  Sword  did  late  obtain 
Nor  that  he  made  the  Floure-de-luce  so  'fraid, 
Thougli  strongly  hedged  of  bloody  Lions'  ^laws. 
That  witty  Lewis  to  him  a  tribute  paid. 
Nor  this,  nor  that,  nor  any  such  small  cau.se  — 
But  only,  for  this  worthy  knight  durst  prove 
To  lose  his  crown  rather  than  fail  his  love. 


0  happy  Thames,  that  didst  my  Stella  bear, 

1  saw  thyself,  with  many  a  smiling  line 
Upon  thy  cheerl'ul  face,  Joy's  livery  wear, 
While  those  fair  planets  on  thy  streams  did  shine. 


292  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Tlie  boat  for  joy  could  not  to  dance  forbear, 
While  wanton  winds,  with  beauty  so  divine 
Ravish'd,  stay'd  not,  till  in  her  golden  hair 
They  did  themselves  (0  sweetest  prison)  twine. 
And  fain  those  ^ol's  youth  there  would  their  stay 
Have  made  ;  but,  forced  by  nature  still  to  fly, 
First  did  with  puffing  kiss  tliose  locks  display. 
Slie,  so  dishevell'd,  blush'd  ;  from  window  I 
With  sight  thereof  cried  out,  O  fair  disgrace, 
Let  Honour's  self  to  thee  grant  highest  place  ! 


Highway,  since  you  my  chief  Parnassus  be ; 
And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  ears  not  unsweet. 
Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses'  feet. 
More  soft  than  to  a  chamber  melody  ; 
Now  blessed  You  bear  onward  blessed  Me 
To  Her,  where  I  my  heart  safe  left  shall  meet. 
My  Muse  and  I  must  you  of  duty  gi-eet 
With  thanks  and  wislies,  wishing  thankfully. 
Be  you  still  fair,  honour'd  by  public  heed. 
By  no  encroachment  wr(3ng'd,  nor  time  forgot ; 
Nor  blamed  for  blood,  nor  shamed  for  sinful  deed. 
And  that  you  know,  I  envy  you  no  lot 
Of  highest  wish,  I  wish  you  so  much  bliss, 
Huudreds  of  years  you  Stella's  feet  may  kiss. 

Of  the  foregoing,  the  first,  the  second,  and  the  last 
sonnet,  are  my  f^^vourites.  But  the  general  beauty  of 
them  all  is,  that  they  are  so  perfectly  characteristical. 
The  spirit  of  "learning  and  of  chivahy," — of  which 
union,  Spenser  has  entitled  Sydney  to  have  been  the 
"president," — shines  through  them.  I  confess  I  can  see 
nothing  of  the  "jtvjune"  or  "frigid"  in  them;  much  less 
of  the  "stiff"  and  "  cumljrous  " — which  I  have  some- 
times heard  objected  to  the  Arcadia.  The  verse  runs 
off  swiftly  and  gallantly.  It  might  have  been  tmicd  to 
the  trumpet ;  or  tempered  (as  himself  expresses  it)  to 
"  trampling  liorses'  feet."  Tliey  abound  in  felicitous 
phrases — 

0  heav'idy  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face — 

"  Sth  ikinnet. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  rillLIP  SYDNEY.         293 

Sweet  i^illows,  sweetest  bed  ; 

A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 

2cl  Sonnet. 

•  That  sweet  enemy, — France — 

bth  Sonnet. 

But  they  are  not  rich  in  words  only,  in  vague  and 
unlocalised  feelings — the  failing  too  much  of  some  poetry 
of  the  present  day — they  are  full,  material,  and  cu"cmn- 
stantiated.  Time  and  place  appropriates  every  one  of 
them.  It  is  not  a  fever  of  passion  wasting  itself  upon  a 
thin  diet  of  dainty  words,  but  a  transcendent  passion  per- 
vading and  illuminating  action,  pm'suits,  studies,  feats  of 
arms,  the  opiiuons  of  contemporaries,  and  his  judgment  of 
them.  An  historical  thread  runs  through  them,  which 
almost  affixes  a  date  to  them ;  marks  the  ivhen  and  where 
they  were  written. 

I  have  dwelt  the  longer  iipou  what  I  conceive  the  merit 
of  these  poems,  because  I  have  been  hurt  by  the  wanton- 
ness (I  wish  I  could  treat  it  by  a  gentler  name)  with 
which  W.  H.  takes  every  occasion  of  insidting  the  memory 
of  Sir  Philip  Sydney.  But  the  decisions  of  the  Author  of 
Talde  Talk,  etc.  (most  profound  and  subtle  where  they 
are,  as  for  the  most  part,  just),  are  more  safely  to  be  relied 
upon,  on  sulyects  and  authors  he  has  a  partiality  for, 
than  on  such  as  he  has  conceived  an  accidental  prejudice 
against.  Milton  wrote  sonnets,  and  was  a  king-hater ;  and 
it  was  congenial  perhaps  to  sacrifice  a  coiu-tier  to  a  patriot. 
But  I  Avas  unwilling  to  lose  a  fine  idea  from  my  mind. 
The  noble  images,  passions,  sentiments,  and  poetical  deli- 
Cficies  of  character,  scattered  all  over  the  Arcadia  (si)ite 
of  some  stiffness  and  encumberment),  justify  to  me  the 
character  which  his  contemporaries  have  left  us  of  the 
writer.  I  cannot  think  with  the  Critic,  that  Sir  Philip 
Sj^dney  was  that  opprohrioiis  thing  which  a  foolish  noble- 
man in  his  insolent  hostility  chose  to  term  him.  I  call 
to  mind  the  epitaph  made  on  him,  to  guide  me  to  juster 
thoughts  of  him  ;  and  I  repose  upon  the  beautiful  lines 


294  THE  ESSAYS  OiP  ELIA. 

ill  tlie  "  Friend's  Passion  for  his  Astrdphcl,"  printed  with 
the  Elegies  of  Si^enser  and  others. 

You  knew — wlio  knew  not  Astrophel  ? 

(That  I  should  live  to  say  I  knew, 

And  have  not  in  possession  still  !) — 

Things  known  permit  me  to  renew — 
Of  him  you  know  his  merit  such, 
I  cannot  say — you  hear — too  nuich. 

Within  these  woods  of  Arcady 

He  chief  delight  and  pleasure  took  ; 

And  on  the  mountain  Partheny, 

Ui^on  the  crystal  licpud  brook. 
The  Muses  met  him  every  day. 
That  taught  him  sing,  to  write,  and  say. 

When  he  descended  down  the  mount, 
His  personage  seemed  most  divine  : 
A  thousand  graces  one  might  count 
Upon  his  lovely  cheerful  eyne. 

To  hear  him  speak,  and  sweetly  smile. 

You  were  in  Paradise  the  while. 

A  sweet  attractive  kind  of  grace  ; 

A  full  (issuraiice  i/ivcn  by  looks  ; 

Coiifiiiintl  ciiiiifiirt  in  a  face, 

The  liitcai/u'./Us  (f  Gospel  books — 
I  trow  that  count'nance  cannot  lye, 
Whose  thoughts  are  legible  in  the  eye. 


Above  all  others  this  is  he, 
Wliich  erst  approval  in  his  song, 
Tluit  love  and  honour  might  agree. 
And  that  pure  love  will  do  no  wrong. 

Sweet  saints,  it  is  no  sin  or  blame 

To  love  a  man  of  virtuous  name. 

Did  never  love  so  sweetly  breathe 
In  any  mortal  breast  before  ; 
Did  never  Muse  inspire  beneath 
A  Poet's  brain  with  finer  store  ! 

He  wrote  of  Love  with  high  conceit, 

And  Beauty  rear'd  above  her  height. 

Or  let  any  one  read  the  deeper  sorrows  (grief  running 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  A(iO.         295 

into  rage)  in  the  Poem, — the  last  in  the  collection  accom- 
panying the  above, — which  from  internal  testimony  I 
believe  to  be  Lord  Brooke's — beginning  with  "  Silence 
augmenteth  grief,"  and  then  seriously  ask  himself,  whether 
the  subject  of  such  absorbing  and  confounding  regrets 
coidd  have  been  that  thing  which  Lord  Oxford  termed  him. 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY -FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

Dan  Stuakt  once  told  us,  that  he  did  not  remember 
that  he  ever  deliberately  walked  into  the  Exhibition  at 
Somerset  House  in  his  life.  He  might  occasionally  have 
escorted  a  party  of  ladies  across  the  way  that  were 
going  in,  but  he  never  went  in  of  his  own  head.  Yet 
the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  newspaper  stood  then 
just  where  it  does  now — we  are  carrying  you  back, 
reader,  some  thirty  years  or  more — with  its  gilt-globe- 
topt  front  facing  that  emporium  of  our  artists'  grand 
Annual  Exposure.  We  sometimes  wish  that  we  had 
observed  the  some  abstinence  with  Daniel. 

A  word  or  two  of  D.  S.  He  ever  appeared  to  us  one 
of  the  finest-tempered  of  Editors.  Perry,  of  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  was  equally  pleasant,  with  a  dash,  no  slight 
one  either,  of  the  courtier.  S.  was  frank,  plain,  and 
English  all  over.  AVe  have  worked  for  both  these 
gentlemen. 

It  is  soothing  to  contemplate  the  head  of  the  Ganges  ; 
to  trace  the  first  little  bublilings  of  a  mighty  river, 

Witli  holy  reverence  to  approach  the  rocks, 
Whence  glide  the  streams  renowned  in  ancient  song. 

Fired  with  a  perusal  of  the  Abyssinian  Pilgrim's  ex- 
ploratory ramblings  after  the  cradle  of  the  infixnt  Nilus, 
we  well  remember  on  one  fine  summer  holyday  (a 
"whole  day's  leave"  we  called  it  at  Christ's  hospital) 


296  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

sallying  forth  at  rise  of  sun,  not  very  well  provisioned 
either  for  such  an  undertaking,  to  trace  the  current  of 
the  New  River — Middletonian  stream  ! — to  its  scaturient 
source,  as  we  had  read,  in  meadows  by  fair  Amwell. 
Gallantly  did  we  commence  our  solitaiy  quest — for  it 
was  essential  to  the  dignity  of  a  Discovery,  that  no 
eye  of  schoolboy,  save  our  own,  should  beam  on  the 
detection.  By  flowery  spots,  and  verdant  lanes  skirting 
Hornsey,  Hope  trained  us  on  in  many  a  baffling  turn ; 
endless,  hopeless  meanders,  as  it  seemed ;  or  as  if  the 
jealous  waters  had  dodged  us,  reluctant  to  have  the 
humble  spot  of  their  nativity  revealed ;  till  spent,  and 
nigh  famished,  before  set  of  the  same  sun,  we  sate  down 
somewhere  by  Bowes  Farm  near  Tottenham,  with  a  tithe 
of  our  proposed  labours  only  yet  accom]>lished ;  sorely 
convinced  in  spirit,  that  that  Brucian  enteiprise  was  as 
yet  too  arduous  for  our  young  shoulders. 

Not  more  refreshing  to  the  thirsty  curiosity  of  the 
traveller  is  the  tracing  of  some  mighty  waters  up  to  their 
shallow  fontlet,  than  it  is  to  a  pleased  and  caiidid  reader 
to  go  back  to  the  inexperienced  essays,  the  first  callow 
flights  in  authorship,  of  some  established  name  in  litera- 
ture ;  from  the  Gnat  which  preluded  to  the  ^neid,  to 
the  Duck  which  Samuel  Johnson  trod  on. 

In  those  days,  every  Morning  Paper,  as  an  essential 
retainer  to  its  establishment,  kept  an  author,  who  was 
bound  to  furnish  daily  a  quantum  of  witty  paragraphs. 
Sixpence  a  joke — and  it  was  thought  pretty  high  too — 
was  Dan  Stuart's  settled  remuneration  in  tlicse  cases. 
The  chat  of  the  day — scandal,  but,  aliove  all,  di^ess — 
furnished  the  material.  The  length  of  no  paragraph  was 
to  exceed  seven  lines.  Shorter  they  might  be,  but  they 
must  be  poignant. 

A  fashion  of  flesh,  or  rather  2^ink-co\o\\rcd  hose  for  the 
ladies,  luckily  coming  up  at  the  juncture  when  we  were 
on  our  probation  for  the  place  of  Chief  Jester  to  S.'s 
Paper,  established  our  reputation  in  that  line.  We  were 
pronounced  a  "capital  hand."     0  the  conceits  which  we 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.         297 

varied  upon  red  in  all  its  prismatic  diflcreuces  !  from  the 
trite  and  obvious  flower  of  Cytherea,  to  the  flaming 
costume  of  the  lady  that  has  her  sitting  upon  "many 
waters."  Then  there  was  the  collateral  topic  of  ankles. 
What  an  occasion  to  a  truly  chaste  writer,  like  ourself,  of 
touching  that  nice  brink,  and  yet  never  tumbling  over  it, 
of  a  seemingly  ever  approximating  something  "  not  quite 
proper;"  while,  like  a  skilful  posture -master,  balancing 
betwixt  decorums  and  then-  opposites,  he  keeps  the  line, 
from  which  a  hau-'s- breadth  deviation  is  destniction ; 
hovering  in  the  confines  of  light  and  darkness,  or  where 
"both  seem  either;"  a  hazy  uncertain  delicacy;  Auto- 
lyciLS-like  in  the  Play,  still  putting  ofi"  his  expectant 
auditory  with  "Whoop,  do  me  no  harm,  good  man!" 
But  above  all,  that  conceit  arrided  us  most  at  that  time, 
and  still  tickles  our  midrift'  to  remember,  where,  allu- 
sively to  the  flight  of  Astr^ea — ultima  Ccelestiim  terras 
reliquit — we  pronounced — in  reference  to  the  stockings 
still — that   Modesty,   taking   hee   final   leave   of 

MORTALS,  HER  LAST  BlUSH  WAS  VISIBLE  IN  HER  ASCENT 

TO  THE  Heavens  by  the  tract  op  the  glowing  in- 
step. This  might  be  called  the  crowning  conceit :  and 
was  esteemed  tolerable  writing  in  those  days. 

But  the  fashion  of  jokes,  with  all  other  things,  passes 
away;  as  did  the  transient  mode  which  had  so  favoured  us. 
The  ankles  of  our  foir  friends  in  a  few  weeks  began  to 
reassimie  their  whiteness,  and  left  us  scarce  a  leg  to 
stand  upon.  Other  female  whims  followed,  but  none, 
methought,  so  pregnant,  so  iuvitatory  of  shrewd  conceits, 
and  more  than  single  meanings. 

Somebody  has  said,  that  to  swallow  six  cross-buns 
daily  consecutively  for  a  fortnight,  wovdd  smfeit  the 
stoutest  digestion.  But  to  have  to  furnish  as  many  jokes 
daily,  and  that  not  for  a  fortnight,  but  for  a  long  twelve- 
month, as  we  were  constrained  to  do,  was  a  little  harder 
exaction.  "  Man  goeth  forth  to  his  work  imtil  the 
evening" — from  a  reasonable  hour  in  the  morning,  we 
presume  it  was  meant.     Now,  as  our  main  occupation 


298  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

took  lis  up  from  eight  till  five  every  day  in  the  city ;  and 
as  our  evening  hours,  at  that  time  of  life,  had  generally 
to  do  with  anything  rather  than  business,  it  follows,  that 
the  only  time  we  could  spare  for  this  manufactory  of 
jokes — our  supplementary  livelihood,  that  supplied  us  in 
eveiy  want  beyond  mere  bread  and  cheese — was  exactly 
that  part  of  the  day  wliich  (as  we  have  heard  of  No 
Man's  Land)  may  be  fitly  denominated  No  Man's  Time ; 
that  is,  no  time  in  which  a  man  ought  to  be  up,  and 
awake,  in.  To  speak  more  plainly,  it  is  that  time  of  an 
hour,  or  an  hour  and  a  half's  duration,  in  which  a  man, 
whose  occasions  call  him  up  so  preposterously,  has  to 
wait  for  his  breakfast. 

0  those  head-aches  at  dawn  of  day,  when  at  five,  or 
half-past  five  in  summer,  and  not  much  later  in  the  dark 
seasons,  we  were  compelled  to  rise,  having  been  perhaps 
not  above  four  hours  in  bed — (for  we  were  no  go-to-beds 
with  the  lamb,  though  we  anticipated  the  lark  ofttimes  in 
her  rising — we  like  a  parting  cup  at  midnight,  as  all 
young  men  did  before  these  effeminate  times,  and  to 
have  our  friends  about  us — we  were  not  constellated 
under  Aquarius  that  watery  sign,  and  therefore  incapable 
of  Bacchus,  cold,  washy,  bloodless — we  were  none  of 
your  Basilian  watersponges,  nor  had  taken  our  degrees  at 
Mount  Ague — we  were  right  toping  Capulets,  jolly  com- 
panions, we  and  they) — but  to  have  to  get  up,  as  Ave 
said  before,  curtailed  of  half  our  fair  sleep,  fasting,  with 
only  a  dim  vista  of  refreshing  bohea  in  the  distance — to 
be  necessitated  to  rouse  ourselves  at  the  detestable  rap  of 
an  old  hag  of  a  domestic,  who  seemed  to  take  a  diabolical 
pleasure  in  her  announcement  that  it  was  "  time  to  rise  ;" 
and  whose  chappy  knuckles  we  have  often  yearned  to 
amputate,  and  string  them  up  at  our  chamber  door, 
to  be  a  terror  to  all  such  unseasonable  rest-breakers  in 
future 

"  Facil "  and  sweet,  as  Virgil  sings,  had  been  the 
"  descending  "  of  the  over-night,  balmy  the  first  sinking 


NEWSPAPERS  TIIIETY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.  299 

of  the  heavy  head  upon  the  pillow ;  but  to  get  up,  as  he 
goes  on  to  say, 

— I'evocare  gradus,  superasque  evadere  ad  auras — 

and  to  get  up,  moreover,  to  make  jokes  with  malice  pre- 
pended — there  was  the  "labom-,"  there  the  "work." 

No  Egyptian  taskmaster  ever  devised  a  slavery  like  to 
that,  our  slavery.  No  fractious  operants  ever  turned  out 
for  half  the  tyranny  which  this  necessity  exercised  upon 
us.  Half  a  dozen  jests  in  a  day  (bating  Sundays  too), 
why,  it  seems  nothing !  We  make  twice  the  nimiber 
every  day  in  om'  lives  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  claim 
no  Sabbatical  exemptions.  But  then  they  come  into  our 
head.  But  when  the  head  has  to  go  out  to  them — when 
the  mountain  must  go  to  Mahomet — 

Reader,  try  it  for  once,  only  for  a  short  tw^elvemonth. 
It  was  not  eveiy  week  that  a  fashion  of  pink  stockings 
came  up  ;  but  mostly,  instead  of  it,  some  rugged  untract- 
able  subject ;  some  topic  impossible  to  be  contorted  into 
the  risible ;  some  feature,  upon  which  no  smile  '  could 
play ;  some  flint,  from  which  no  j^rocoss  of  ingenuity 
could  procure  a  scintillation.  There  they  lay ;  there 
your  appointed  tale  of  brick-making  was  set  before  you, 
which  you  must  finish,  with  or  without  straw,  as  it 
happened.  The  craving  di'agon — the  Public — like  him 
in  Bel's  Temi)le — must  be  fed,  it  exjiected  its  daily 
rations ;  and  Daniel,  and  cm-selves,  to  do  us  justice,  did 
the  best  we  could  on  this  side  bursting  him. 

While  we  were  wringing  out  coy  sprightline.sses  for 
the  Fofit,  and  writhing  under  the  toil  of  what  is  called 
"easy  writing,"  Bob  Allen,  our  qnondam  schoolfellow, 
was  tapping  his  imi)racticable  brains  in  a  like  service  for 
the  Oracle.  Not  that  Robert  troubled  himself  much 
about  wit.  If  his  paragraphs  had  a  sj)riglitly  air  about 
them,  it  was  snfiicient.  He  carried  this  nonchalance  so 
far  at  last,  that  a  matter  of  intelligence,  and  that  no  veiy 
important  one,  was  not  seldom  palmed  upon  his  em- 
ployers for  a  good  jest ;  for  example   sake — "  Walking 


300  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA, 

yesterday  morning  casually  doivn  Snovj  Hill,  who  shoidd 
toe  meet  hut  Mr.  DejnUy  Humj)lireys  !  we  rejoice  to  add, 
that  the  ivorthy  Dejyuty  appeared  to  enjoy  a  good  state  of 
hecdth.  We  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  seen  him  look 
better."  This  gentleman  so  surprisingly  met  upon  Snow 
Hill,  from  some  peculiarities  in  gait  or  gesture,  was  a 
constant  butt  for  mirth  to  the  small  paragraph-mongers 
of  the  day ;  and  oiu:  friend  thought  that  he  might  have 
his  fling  at  him  with  the  rest.  We  met  A.  in  Holborn 
shortly  after  this  extraordinary  rencounter,  which  he 
told  with  tears  of  satisfection  in  his  eyes,  and  chuckling 
at  the  anticipated  effects  of  its  announcement  next  day 
in  the  paper. 

We  did  not  quite  comprehend  where  the  wit  of  it  lay 
at  the  time ;  nor  was  it  easy  to  be  detected,  when  the 
thing  came  out  advantaged  by  type  and  letterpress.  He 
had  l)etter  have  met  anything  that  morning  than  a 
Common  Council  Man.  His  services  were  shortly  after 
dispensed  with,  on  the  jjlea  that  his  paragraphs  of  late 
had  been  deficient  in  point.  The  one  in  question,  it  must 
l)e  owned,  had  an  air,  in  the  opening  especially,  proper 
to  awaken  curiosity ;  and  the  sentiment,  or  moral,  wears 
the  aspect  of  humanity  and  good  neighbourly  feeling. 
But  somehow  the  conclusion  was  not  judged  altogether 
to  answer  to  the  magnificent  promise  of  the  premises. 
We  traced  om-  friend's  pen  afterwards  in  the  True 
Briton,  the  Star,  the  Traveller, — from  all  which  he  was 
successively  dismissed,  the  Proprietors  having  "  no  further 
occasion  for  his  services."  Nothing  Avas  easier  than  to 
detect  him.  When  wit  failed,  or  topics  ran  low,  there 
constantly  ap[)eared  the  following — "  It  is  not  generally 
knoivn  that  tlie  three  Blue  Balls  at  the  Paivnhrokers'  shops 
are  the  ancient  arms  of  Lombardy.  The  Lombards  were 
the  first  money-brohers  in  Europe."  Bob  has  done  more 
to  set  the  pid)lic  right  on  this  imj)ortant  point  of  blazonry, 
than  the  whole  College  of  Heralds. 

The  appointment  of  a  regular  wit  has  long  ceased  to 
be  a  part  of  the  economy  of  a  Morning  Pa})er.     Editors 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.  301 

find  their  own  jokes,  or  do  as  well  without  them.  Parson 
Este,  and  Topham,  brought  up  the  set  custom  of  "  witty 
paragraphs  "  first  in  the  World.  Boaden  was  a  reigning 
paragraphist  in  his  day,  and  succeeded  poor  Allen  in  the 
Oracle.  But,  as  we  said,  the  fashion  of  jokes  passes 
away ;  and  it  woidd  be  difficidt  to  discover  in  the  bio- 
grapher of  Mrs.  Siddons,  any  traces  of  tliat  vivacity  and 
fancy  whicli  charmed  the  whole  town  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  present  centiuy.  Even  the  prelusive  deli- 
cacies of  the  present  writer — the  curt  "Astrtean  allu- 
sion " — -would  be  thought  pedantic  and  out  of  date,  in 
these  days. 

From  the  office  of  the  2Iorning  Post  (for  we  may  as 
well  exliaust  oiu'  Newspaper  Reminiscences  at  once)  liy 
change  of  property  in  the  paper,  we  were  transferred, 
mortifying  exchange  !  to  the  office  of  the  Alhion  News- 
paper, late  Rackstrow's  Museum,  in  Fleet  street.  What 
a  transition — from  a  handsome  apartment,  from  rosewood 
desks  and  silver  inkstands,  to  an  office — no  office,  but  a 
den  rather,  but  just  redeemed  from  the  occupation  of  dead 
monsters,  of  which  it  seemed  redolent — from  the  centre 
of  loyalty  and  fashion,  to  a  focus  of  vulgarity  and  sedi- 
tion !  Here  in  m^^rky  closet,  inadequate  from  its  square 
contents  to  the  receipt  of  the  two  bodies  of  Editor  and 
humble  paragraph-maker,  together  at  one  time,  sat  in  the 
discharge  of  his  new  editorial  functions  (the  "  Bigod  "  of 
Elia)  the  redoubted  John  Fenwick. 

F.,  ^^dthout  a  guinea  in  his  pocket,  and  having  left  not 
many  in  the  pockets  of  his  friends  whom  he  might  com- 
mand, had  purchased  (on  tick,  doubtless)  the  whole  and 
sole  Editorship,  Proprietorship,  with  aU  the  rights  and 
titles  (such  as  they  were  worth)  of  the  Alhion  from  one 
Lovell ;  of  whom  we  know  nothing,  save  that  he  had 
stood  in  the  pillory  for  a  libel  on  the  Prince  of  Wales.  , 
With  this  hopeless  concern — for  it  had  been  sinking  ever 
since  its  commencement,  and  could  now  reckon  upon  not 
more  than  a  hundred  subscribers — F.  resolutely  determined 
upon  pulling  down  the  Government  in  the  first  instance, 


302  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

and  making  both  our  fortunes  by  way  of  corollary.  For 
seven  weeks  and  more  did  this  infatuated  democrat  go 
about  borrowing  seven-shilling  pieces,  and  lesser  coin,  to 
meet  the  daily  demands  of  the  Stamp  Office,  which  allowed 
no  credit  to  publications  of  that  side  in  politics.  An  out- 
cast from  politer  bread,  we  attached  our  small  talents  to 
the  forlorn  fortunes  of  our  friend.  Our  occupation  now 
was  to  write  treason. 

Recollections  of  feelings — which  were  all  that  now  re- 
mained from  our  first  boyish  heats  kindled  by  the  French 
Eevolution,  when,  if  we  were  misled,  we  erred  in  the  com- 
pany of  some  who  are  accounted  very  good  men  now — 
rather  than  any  tendency  at  this  time  to  Republican 
doctrines — assisted  us  in  assimiing  a  style  of  writing, 
while  the  paper  lasted,  consonant  in  no  very  under  tone 
to  the  right  earnest  fanaticism  of  F.  Our  cue  was  now 
to  insinuate,  rather  than  recommend,  possible  abdica- 
tions. Blocks,  axes,  Whitehall  tribunals,  were  covered 
with  flowers  of  so  cunning  a  periphrasis — as  Mr.  Bayes 
says,  never  naming  the  thing  directly — that  the  keen  eye 
of  an  Attorney -General  was  insufficient  to  detect  the 
lurking  snake  among  them.  There  were  times,  indeed, 
when  we  sighed  for  our  more  gentleman-like  o(;(;upation 
under  Stuart.  But  with  change  of  masters  it  is  ever 
change  of  service.  Already  one  paragraph,  and  fuiother, 
as  we  learned  afterwards  from  a  gentleman  at  the  Treasury, 
had  begun  to  be  marked  at  that  office,  with  a  view  of  its 
btiing  submitted  at  least  to  the  attention  of  the  projjer 
Law  Officers — when  an  unlucky,  or  rather  lucky  epigram 

from  our  pen,  aimed  at  Sir  J s  M h,  who  was  on 

the  eve  of  departing  for  India  to  reap  the  fruits  of  his 
apostasy,  as  F.  pronounced  it  (it  is  hardly  worth  parti- 
cularizing), happening  to  offend  the  nice  sense  of  Lord 
(or,  as  he  then  delighted  to  be  called  Citizen)  Stanhope, 
deprived  F.  at  once  of  the  last  hopes  of  a  guinea  from 
the  last  patron  that  had  stuck  by  us ;  and  breaking  up 
our  establishment,  left  us  to  the  safe,  but  somewhat 
mortifying,  neglect  of  the  Crown  Lawyers.     It  was  about 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.    303 

this  time,  or  a  little  earlier,  that  Dan  Stuart  made  that 
curious  coufcssiou  to  us,  that  he  had  "  never  deliberately 
walked  iuto  au  Exliibitiou  at  Somerset  House  iu  his 
life." 


BARRENNESS  OF  THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY 
IN  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

Hogarth  excepted,  can  we  produce  any  one  painter 
within  the  last  fifty  years,  or  since  the  humom*  of  ex- 
liil)iting  began,  that  has  treated  a  story  imaginatively  ? 
By  this  we  mean,  upon  whom  his  subject  has  so  acted, 
that  it  has  seemed  to  direct  him — not  to  be  arranged  by 
him  ?  Any  upon  whom  its  leading  or  collateral  points 
have  impressed  themselves  so  tyrannically,  that  he  dared 
not  treat  it  otherwise,  lest  he  shoidd  falsify  a  revelation  1 
Any  that  has  imparted  to  his  compositions,  not  merely  so 
much  tmth  as  is  enough  to  convey  a  story  \nt\\  clearness, 
but  that  individualizing  property,  which  shovdd  keep  the 
subject  so  treated  distinct  iu  feature  from  every  other 
subject,  however  similar,  and  to  common  apprehensions 
almost  identical ;  so  that  we  might  say,  this  and  this 
part  could  have  foimd  an  appropriate  place  in  no  other 
picture  in  the  world  but  this  1  Is  there  anything  in 
modern  art — we  will  not  demand  that  it  should  be  equal 
— but  in  any  way  analogous  to  what  Titian  has  effected, 
in  that  wonderful  liringing  together  of  two  times  in  the 
"Ariadne,"  in  the  National  Galleiy^  Precipitous,  with 
his  reeling  satyr  rout  about  him,  repeopling  and  re-illum- 
ing suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk  with  a  new  fmy 
beyond  the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  in  fire,  fire-like  flings 
himself  at  the  Cretan.  This  is  the  time  present.  With 
this  telling  of  the  storj^,  an  artist,  and  no  ordinary  one, 
might  remain  richly  proud.  Guido,  in  his  harmonious 
version  of  it,  saw  no  farther.     But  from  the  depths  o^ 


304  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  . 

the  imaginative  spirit  Titian  has  recalled  past  time,  and 
laid  it  contributory  with  the  present  to  one  simultaneous 
effect.  With  the  desert  all  ringing  with  the  mad  cymbals 
of  his  followers,  made  lucid  with  the  presence  and  new 
offers  of  a  god, — as  if  imconscious  of  Bacchus,  or  but  idly 
casting  her  eyes  as  upon  some  unconcerning  pag(!ant — her 
soul  undistra(;ted  from  Theseus — Ariadne  is  still  pacing 
the  solitary  shore  in  as  much  heart-silence,  and  in  almost 
the  same  local  solitude,  with  wliich  she  awoke  at  day- 
break to  catch  the  forlorn  last  glances  of  the  sail  that 
bore  away  the  Athenian. 

Here  are  two  points  miraculously  co-uniting;  fierce 
society,  with  the  feeling  of  solitude  still  absolute ;  noon- 
day revelations,  with  the  accidents  of  the  dull  gray  dawn 
unquenched  and  lingering ;  the  jyresent  Bacchus,  with  the 
jxist  Ariadne :  two  stories,  with  double  Time ;  separate, 
and  harmonizing.  Had  the  artist  made  the  woman  one 
shade  less  indifferent  to  the  God ;  still  more,  had  she 
expressed  a  rapture  at  his  advent,  where  would  have  been 
the  story  of  the  mighty  desolation  of  tlie  heart  previous  1 
merged  in  the  insijjid  accident  of  a  flattering  offer  met 
with  a  welcome  acceptance.  The  Ijroken  heart  for  Theseus 
was  not  likely  to  be  pieced  up  by  a  God. 

We  have  before  us  a  fine  rough  print,  from  a  picture 
hj  Raphael  in  the  Vatican.  It  is  the  Presentation  of 
the  new-born  Eve  to  Adam  by  the  Almighty.  A  fairer 
mother  of  mankind  we  might  imagine,  and  a  goodlier  sire 
perhaps  of  men  since  born.  But  these  are  matters  sub- 
ordinate to  the  conception  of  the  sihiation,  displayed  in 
this  extraordinary  production.  A  tolerable  modern  artist 
would  have  been  satisfied  with  tempering  certain  raptures 
of  connubial  anticipation,  with  a  suitable  acknowledgment 
to  the  Giver  of  the  blessing,  in  the  countenance  of  the 
first  bridegroom  :  something  like  the  divided  attention  of 
the  child  (Adam  was  here  a  child-man)  between  the  given 
toy,  and  the  mother  who  had  just  blest  it  with  the 
bauble.  This  is  the  obvious,  the  first-sight  view,  the 
superficial.     An  artist  of  a  higher  grade,  considering  the 


ON  THE  rRODUcrnoNS  OP'  MODERN  ART.    305 

awM  i^resence  they  were  in,  would  have  taken  care  to 
subtract  something  from  the  expression  of  the  more  human 
l^assion,  and  to  heighten  the  more  spiritual  one.  This 
wovdd  be  as  much  as  an  exhibition-goer,  from  the  opening 
of  Somerset  House  to  last  year's  show,  has  been  encom^aged 
to  look  for.  It  is  obvious  to  hint  at  a  lower  expression 
yet,  in  a  pictiu'e  that,  for  respects  of  drawing  and  colour- 
ing, might  be  deemed  not  wholly  inadmissiljle  within 
these  art-fostering  walls,  in  which  the  raptures  should  be 
as  ninety -nine,  the  gratitude  as  one,  or  perhaps  zero  ! 
By  neither  the  one  passion  nor  the  otlier  has  Raphael 
expounded  the  situation  of  Adam.  Singly  ui)()n  his  brow 
sits  the  absorbing  sense  of  wonder  at  the  created  miracle. 
The  moment  is  seized  by  the  intuitive  artist,  perhaps  not 
self-conscious  of  his  art,  in  which  neither  of  the  conflict- 
ing emotions — a  moment  how  abstracted  ! — have  had 
time  to  spring  up,  or  to  battle  for  indecorous  mastery. — 
We  have  seen  a  landscape  of  a  justly-admired  neoteric, 
in  which  he  aimed  at  delineating  a  fiction,  one  of  the 
most  severely  beautifid  in  antiquity — the  gardens  of  the 

Hesperides.     To  do  Mr. justice,  he  had  i)ainted  a 

laudable  orchard,  with  fitting  seclusion,  and  a  veritable 
dragon  (of  which  a  Polypheme,  by  Poussin,  is  somehow 
a  fac-simile  for  the  situation),  looking  over  into  the  world 
shut  out  backwards,  so  that  none  but  a  "  still-clindiing 
Hercides  "  could  hope  to  catch  a  peep  at  the  admired 
Ternary  of  Recluses.  No  conventual  porter  could  keep 
his  keys  better  than  this  custos  with  the  "  lidless  eyes." 
He  not  only  sees  that  none  do  intrude  into  that  privacy, 
but,  as  clear  as  daylight,  that  none  but  Hercules  aut 
Diabolus  by  any  manner  of  means  can.  So  far  all  is  well. 
We  have  absolute  solitude  here  or  nowhere.  Ah  extra, 
the  damsels  are  snug  enough.  But  here  the  artist's 
corn-age  seems  to  have  failed  him.  He  began  to  pity  his 
pretty  charge,  and,  to  comfort  the  irksomeness,  has 
peopled  their  solitude  with  a  bevy  of  fair  attendants, 
maids  of  honoui',  or  ladies  of  the  bed-chamber,  according 
to  the  approved  etiquette  at  a  court  of  the  nineteenth 

X 


306  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EIJA. 

century  ;  giving  to  the  whole  scene  the  air  of  a  fetc- 
chamjwtre,  if  we  will  but  excuse  the  absence  of  the 
gentlemen.  This  is  well,  and  Watteauish.  But  what  is 
become  of  the  solitary  mystery — the 

Daughters  three, 
That  sing  around  the  golden  tree  ? 

This  is  not  the  way  in  which  Poussin  would  have  treated 
this  subject. 

The  paintings,  or  rather  the  stupendous  architectural 
designs,  of  a  modern  artist,  have  been  urged  as  objections 
to  the  theory  of  our  motto.  They  are  of  a  character,  we 
confess,  to  stagger  it.  His  towered  structures  are  of  the 
highest  order  of  the  material  sublime.  Whether  they 
were  dreams,  or  transcripts  of  some  elder  workmanship — 
Assyrian  ruins  old — restored  by  this  mighty  artist,  they 
satisfy  our  most  stretched  and  craving  conceptions  of  the 
glories  of  the  antique  world.  It  is  a  pity  that  they  were 
ever  peopled.  On  that  side,  the  imagination  of  the  artist 
halts,  and  ajjpears  defective.  Let  us  examine  the  jjoint 
of  the  story  in  the  "  Belshazzar's  Feast."  We  will  intro- 
duce it  by  an  apposite  anecdote. 

The  court  historians  of  the  day  record,  that  at  the  first 
dinner  given  by  the  late  King  (then  Prince  Regent)  at 
the  Pavilion,  the  following  cliara(;teristic  frolic  was  played 
off.  The  guests  were  select  and  admiring  ;  the  l)anquet 
profuse  and  admirable  ;  the  liglits  lustrous  and  oriental ; 
the  eye  was  perfectly  dazzled  with  the  display  of  plate, 
among  which  the  great  gold  salt-cellar,  brought  from  the 
regalia  in  the  Tower  for  this  especial  pm-pose,  itself  a 
tower  !  stood  conspicuous  for  its  magnitude.  And  now 
the  Rev.  *  *  *,  the  then  admired  court  Chaplain,  was 
proceeding  with  the  grace,  when,  at  a  signal  given,  the 
lights  were  suddenly  overcast,  and  a  huge  transparency 
was  discovered,  in  which  glittered  in  gold  letters — 

"  Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up-Alive  ! " 

Imagine  the  confusion  of  the  guests  ;  the  Georges  and 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODEllN   AltT.        307 

gai'ters,  jewt'ln,  bracelets,  moulted  iipmi  the  occasion  ! 
The  fans  dropped,  and  picked  up  the  next  morning  by 
the  sly  com-t-pages  !  Mrs.  Fitz-what's-her-name  fainting, 
and  the  Countess  of  *  *  *  holding  the  smelling-bottle, 
till  the  good-humoiu-ed  Prince  caused  harmony  to  be  re- 
stored, by  calling  in  fresh  candles,  and  declaring  that  the 
whole  was  nothing  but  a  pantomime  hoax,  got  up  by  the 
ingenious  Mr.  Farley,  of  Covent  Garden,  from  hints  which 
his  Royal  Highness  himself  had  furnished  !  Then  ima- 
gine the  infinite  applause  that  followed,  the  mutual 
rallyings,  the  declarations  that  "  they  were  not  much 
frightened,"  of  the  assembled  galaxy. 

The  point  of  time  in  the  picture  exactly  answers  to 
the  appearance  of  the  transparency  in  the  anecdote.  The 
huddle,  the  flutter,  the  bustle,  the  escape,  the  alarm,  and 
the  mock  alarm ;  the  prettinesses  heightened  l)y  conster- 
nation ;  the  courtier's  fear  which  was  flattery  ;  and  the 
lady's  which  was  aft'ectation ;  all  that  we  may  conceive 
to  have  taken  place  in  a  mob  of  Brighton  courtiers, 
sympathizing  with  the  well-acted  suiprise  of  their  sove- 
reign ;  all  this,  and  no  more,  is  exhibited  by  the  well- 
dressed  lords  and  ladies  in  the  Hall  of  Belus.  Just  this 
sort  of  consternation  we  have  seen  among  a  flock  of  dis- 
quieted wdld  geese  at  the  report  only  of  a  gim  having 
gone  off ! 

But  is  this  vulgar  fright,  this  mere  animal  anxiety 
for  the  preservation  of  their  persons — such  as  we  have 
witnessed  at  a  theatre,  when  a  slight  alarm  of  fire  has 
been  given — an  adequate  exponent  of  a  supernatural 
terror'?  the  way  in  which  the  finger  of  God,  writing 
judgments,  would  have  been  met  by  the  withered  con- 
science? There  is  a  human  fear,  and  a  divine  fear. 
The  one  is  disturbed,  restless,  and  bent  upon  escape ; 
the  other  is  bowed  down,  eff'ortless,  jjassive.  When  the 
spirit  appeared  before  Eliphaz  in  the  visions  of  the  night, 
and  the  liair  of  his  flesh  stood  up,  was  it  in  the  thoughts 
of  the  Temanite  to  ring  the  bell  of  his  chandler,  or  to 
call  up  the  servants  1     But  let  us  see  in  the  text  what 


308  THE  ESSAYS  <»K  EIJA. 

there  is  to  justity  all  this  huddk'  oi'  vultj,ar  consterna- 
tion. 

From  the  words  of  Daniel  it  appears  that  Belshazzar 
had  made  a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords,  and 
drank  wine  before  the  thousand.  The  golden  and  silver 
vessels  are  gorgeously  enumerated,  with  the  princes,  tlie 
king's  concubines,  and  his  Avives.     Then  follows — 

"  In  the  same  hoiu-  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's 
hand,  and  wrote  over  against  the  candlestick  upon  the 
plaster  of  the  wall  of  the  king's  palace ;  and  the  Hncf 
saw  the  part  of  the  hand  that  wi'ote.  Then  tlie  limfs 
countenance  was  changed,  and  his  thoughts  trouliled  him, 
so  that  the  joints  of  his  loins  were  loosened,  and  his 
knees  smote  one  against  another." 

This  is  the  plain  text.  By  no  hint  can  it  be  other- 
wise inferred,  but  that  the  appearance  was  solely  confined 
to  the  fancy  of  Belshazzar,  that  his  single  brain  wjis 
trouliled.  Not  a  word  is  spoken  of  its  being  seen  by  any 
else  there  present,  not  even  by  the  queen  herself,  who 
merely  undertalvcs  for  the  interpretation  of  the  pheno- 
menon, as  related  to  her,  doubtless,  by  her  husljand. 
The  lords  are  simply  said  to  be  astonished ;  i.e.  at  the 
trouble  and  the  change  of  countenance  in  their  sovereign. 
Even  the  prophet  does  not  appear  to  have  seen  the  scroll, 
which  the  king  saw.  He  recalls  it  only,  as  Josei)h  did 
the  Dream  to  the  King  of  Egyjit.  "  Then  was  the  part 
of  the  hand  sent  from  him  [the  Lord],  and  this  writing 
was  Avritten."     He  speaks  of  the  phantasm  as  past. 

Then  what  becomes  of  this  needless  multiplication  of 
the  miracle  ?  this  message  to  a  royal  conscience,  singly 
expressed — for  it  was  said,  "  Thy  kingdom  is  divided,  "^ — 
simultaneously  impressed  upon  the  fancies  of  a  thousand 
courtiers,  who  were  implied  in  it  neither  directly  nor 
grammatically  1 

But,  admitting  the  artist's  own  version  of  the  story, 
and  that  the  sight  was  seen  also  by  the  thousand 
courtiers — let  it  have  been  visible  to  all  Babylon — as  the 
knees  of  Belshazzar  were  shaken,  and  his  countenance 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.    309 

troubled,  eveu  so  would  the  knees  of  every  mau  in 
Babylon,  and  their  countenances,  as  of  an  individual 
man,  have  been  troubled ;  bowed,  bent  down,  so  would 
they  have  remained,  stupor-fixed,  with  no  thought  of 
struggling  with  that  inevitable  judgment. 

Not  all  that  is  optically  possible  to  be  seen,  is  to  be 
shown  in  every  picture.  The  eye  delightedly  dwells 
upon  the  brilliant  individualities  in  a  "  Marriage  at 
Cana,"  by  Veronese,  or  Titian,  to  the  very  texture  and 
colour  of  the  wedding  garments,  the  ring  glittering  upon 
the  bride's  finger,  the  metal  and  fashion  of  the  wine- 
pots  ;  for  at  such  seasons  there  is  leisure  and  luxiu-y  to 
be  ciuious.  But  in  a  "  day  of  judgment,"  or  in  a  "  day 
of  lesser  horrors,  yet  divine,"  as  at  the  impious  feast  of 
Belshazzar,  the  eye  should  see,  as  the  actual  eye  of  an 
agent  or  patient  in  the  immediate  scene  would  see,  only 
in  masses  and  indistinction.  Not  only  the  female  attire 
and  jewelry  exposed  to  the  critical  eye  of  the  fiishion,  as 
minutely  as  the  dresses  in  a  Lady's  Magazine,  in  the 
criticised  pictiire — but  perhaps  the  curiosities  of  anatomical 
science,  and  studied  diversities  of  postm-e,  in  the  falling 
angels  and  sinners  of  Michael  Angelo, — have  no  business 
in  their  great  subjects.     There  was  no  leisure  for  them. 

By  a  wise  folsification,  the  great  masters  of  painting 
got  at  their  true  conclusions  ;  by  not  showing  the  actual 
appearances,  that  is,  all  that  was  to  be  seen  at  any  given 
moment  by  an  indifierent  eye,  but  only  what  the  eye 
might  be  supposed  to  see  in  the  doing  or  sufiering  of 
some  portentous  action.  Suppose  the  moment  of  the 
swallowing  up  of  Pompeii.  There  they  were  to  be  seen — 
houses,  columns,  architectural  i)roportions,  differences  of 
public  and  private  buildings,  men  and  women  at  their 
standing  occupations,  the  diversified  thousand  postures, 
attitudes,  dresses,  in  some  confusion  truly,  but  physically 
they  were  visible.  But  what  eye  saw  them  at  that  eclips- 
ing moment,  which  reduces  confusion  to  a  kind  of  unity, 
and  when  the  senses  are  uptm-ned  from  their  proprieties, 
when  sight  and  hearing  are  a  feeling  only  1     A  thousand 


310  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

years  have  passed,  and  we  are  at  leisure  to  contemplate 
the  weaver  fixed  standing  at  his  shuttle,  the  baker  at  his 
oven,  and  to  turn  over  with  anti(piarian  coolness  the  pots 
and  pans  of  Pompeii. 

"  Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou.  Moon, 
in  the  valley  of  Ajalon."  Who,  in  reading  this  magnifi- 
cent Hebraism,  in  his  conception,  sees  aught  but  the 
heroic  son  of  Nun,  with  the  outstretched  arm,  and  the 
greater  and  lesser  light  obsequious'?  Doubtless  there 
were  to  be  seen  hill  and  dale,  and  chariots  and  horsemen, 
on  open  plain,  or  winding  by  secret  defiles,  and  all  the 
circumstances  and  stratagems  of  war.  But  whose  eyes 
woidd  have  been  conscious  of  this  array  at  the  interposi- 
tion of  the  synchronic  miracle  1  Yet  in  the  picture  of 
this  subject  by  the  artist  of  the  "  Belshazzar's  Feast " — 
no  ignoble  work,  either — the  marshalling  and  landscajie 
of  the  war  is  everything,  the  miracle  sinks  into  an  anec- 
dote of  the  day ;  and  the  eye  may  "  dart  through  rank 
and  file  traverse  "  for  some  minutes,  before  it  shall  dis- 
cover, among  his  armed  followers,  which  is  Joshua  I 
Not  modern  art  alone,  but  ancient,  where  only  it  is  to  be 
found  if  anywhere,  can  be  detected  erring,  from  defect  of 
this  imaginative  faculty.  The  world  has  nothing  to  show 
of  the  preternatural  in  painting,  transcending  the  figure 
of  Lazarus  bursting  his  grave-clothes,  in  the  great  jjicture 
at  Augerstein's.  It  seems  a  thing  between  two  beings. 
A  ghastly  horror  at  itself  struggles  with  newly-apprehend- 
ing gratitude  at  second  life  bestowed.  It  cannot  forget 
that  it  was  a  ghost.  It  has  hardly  felt  that  it  is  a  body. 
It  has  to  tell  of  the  world  of  spirits. — AVas  it  from  a 
feeling,  that  tlie  crowd  of  half- impassioned  bystanders, 
and  tlie  still  more  irrelevant  herd  of  passers-by  at  a  dis- 
tance, who  have  not  heard,  or  but  faintly  have  been  told 
of  the  passing  miracle,  admirable  as  they  are  in  design 
and  hue — for  it  is  a  glorified  work — do  not  respond 
adequately  to  the  action — that  the  single  figure  of  the 
Lazarus  has  been  attributed  to  Michael  Angelo,  and  tlie 
mighty   Sebastian   unfairly  robbed   of  the  fame   of  tlie 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.    311 

greater  half  of  the  interest  ■?  Now  that  there  were  not 
indifferent  passers-by  within  actual  scoj^e  of  the  eyes  of 
those  present  at  the  miracle,  to  whom  the  sound  of  it  had 
but  faintly,  or  not  at  all,  reached,  it  would  be  hardihood 
to  deny  ;  but  woidd  they  see  them  1  or  can  tlie  mind  in 
the  conception  of  it  admit  of  such  unconcerniiiij;  olijects; 
can  it  think  of  them  at  all  1  or  what  associating  k'ague 
to  the  imagination  can  there  be  between  the  seers  and 
the  seers  not,  of  a  presential  miracle  1 

Were  an  artist  to  paint  upon  demand  a  pictm-e  of  a 
Dryad,  we  will  ask  whether,  in  the  present  low  state  of 
expectation,  the  patron  would  not,  or  ought  not  be  ftilly 
satisfied  with  a  beautifid  naked  figure  recumbent  under 
wide -stretched  oaksl  Dis-seat  those  woods,  and  place 
the  same  figure  among  fountains,  and  falls  of  pellucid 
water,  and  you  have  a — Naiad  !  Not  so  in  a  rough  iiriut 
we  have  seen  after  Julio  Romano,  we  think— for  it  is 
long  since  —  there,  by  no  jirocess,  with  mere  change  of 
scene,  could  the  figm-e  have  reciprocated  characters. 
Long,  grotescpie,  fantastic,  yet  with  a  grace  of  her  own, 
beautiful  in  convolution  and  distortion,  linked  to  her  con- 
natural tree,  co-twisting  with  its  limbs  her  own,  till  both 
seemed  either — these,  animated  branches ;  those,  disani- 
mated  members — yet  the  animal  and  vegetable  lives 
sufficiently  kept  distinct — his  Dryad  lay — an  approxima- 
tion of  two  natvu'es,  which  to  conceive,  it  must  be  seen ; 
analogous  to,  not  the  same  with,  the  delicacies  of  Ovidian 
transformations. 

To  the  lowest  subjects,  and,  to  a  superficial  comi^re- 
iiension,  the  most  barren,  the  Great  Masters  gave  loftiness 
and  fruitfulness.  The  large  eye  of  genius  saw  in  the 
meanness  of  present  ol)jects  their  capabilities  of  treatment 
from  their  relations  to  some  grand  Past  or  Future.  How 
has  Raphael — we  must  still  linger  about  the  Vatican — 
treated  the  humble  craft  of  the  shi]?- builder,  in  his 
"  Biulding  of  the  Ark  "  ?  It  is  in  that  scriptural  series, 
to  which  we  have  referred,  and  which,  judging  from  some 
fine  rough  old  graphic  slvctches  of  them  which  we  possess, 


312  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

seem  to  be  of  a  higher  and  more  poetic  grade  than  even 
the  Cartoons.  The  dim  of  sight  are  the  timid  and  the 
shrinl<:ing.  There  is  a  cowardice  in  modern  art.  As  the 
Frenchman,  of  whom  Coleridge's  friend  made  the  pro- 
phetic guess  at  Rome,  from  the  beard  and  horns  of  the 
Moses  of  Michael  Angelo  collected  no  inferences  beyond 
that  of  a  He  Goat  and  a  Cornuto  ;  so  from  this  subject, 
of  mere  mechanic  promise,  it  would  instinctively  turn 
away,  as  from  one  incapable  of  investiture  with  any 
grandeiu'.  The  dock-yards  at  Woolwich  would  object 
derogatory  associations.  The  depot  at  Chatham  would 
be  the  mote  and  the  beam  in  its  intellectual  eye.  But 
not  to  the  nautical  i)reparatious  in  the  ship -yards  of 
Civita  Vecchia  did  Raphael  look  for  instructions,  when 
he  imagined  the  building  of  the  Vessel  that  was  to  be 
conservatory  of  the  wrecks  of  the  si^ecies  of  drowned 
mankind.  In  the  intensity  of  the  action  he  keeps  ever 
out  of  sight  the  meanness  of  the  operation.  There  is  the 
Patriarch,  in  calm  forethought,  and  with  holy  prescience, 
giving  directions.  And  there  are  his  agents — the  solitary 
but  sufficient  Three — hewing,  sawing,  every  one  with  the 
might  and  earnestness  of  a  Demiurgus ;  under  some  in- 
stinctive rather  than  technical  guidance  !  giant -muscled  ; 
every  one  a  Hercides  ;  or  liker  to  those  Vulcanian  Three, 
that  in  sounding  caverns  luider  Mongibello  wrought  in 
fire — Brontes,  and  black  Steropes,  and  Pyracmon.  So 
work  the  workmen  that  should  repair  a  world  ! 

Artists  again  err  in  the  confounding  of  poetic  with 
pictorial  subjects.  In  the  latter,  the  exterior  accidents 
are  nearly  everything,  the  imseen  qualities  as  nothing. 
Othello's  colour — the  infirmities  and  corixilence  of  a  Sir 
John  Falstatf — do  they  haunt  us  perpetually  in  the 
reading  ?  or  are  they  obtruded  upon  our  conceptions  one 
time  for  ninety-nine  that  we  are  lost  in  admiration  at  the 
respective  moral  or  intellectual  attributes  of  the  char- 
acter 1  But  in  a  picture  Othello  is  always  a  Blackamoor  ; 
and  the  other  only  Plump  Jack.  Deeply  corjiorealized, 
and  enchained  ho^jelessly  in  the  grovelling  fetters  of  ex- 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.        313 

ternality,  must  be  the  mind,  to  whicli,  in  its  better 
moments,  the  image  of  the  high-souled,  high-iutelligeuced 
Quixote — the  errant  Star  of  Knighthood,  made  more 
tender  by  eclipse —  has  never  presented  itself  divested 
from  the  unhallowed  accompaniment  of  a  Sancho,  or  a 
rabblemcnt  at  the  heels  of  Rosinante.  That  man  has 
read  his  book  by  halves ;  he  has  laughed,  mistaking  liis 
author's  purport,  which  was — tears.  The  artist  that 
pictures  Quixote  (and  it  is  in  this  degrading  point  that 
he  is  every  season  held  up  at  our  Exhibitions)  in  the 
shallow  hope  of  exciting  mirth,  woidd  have  joined  the 
rabble  at  the  heels  of  his  starved  steed.  We  wish  not 
to  see  tliat  counterfeited,  which  we  woidd  not  have  wished 
to  see  in  the  reality.  Conscious  of  the  heroic  inside  of 
the  noble  Quixote,  who,  on  hearing  that  his  withered 
person  was  passing,  would  have  stepped  over  his  threshold 
to  gaze  upon  his  forlorn  habiliments,  and  the  "  strange 
bed-fellows  which  miseiy  brings  a  man  acquainted  with"? 
Shade  of  Cervantes  !  who  in  thy  Second  Part  could  })ut 
into  the  mouth  of  thy  Quixote  those  high  aspirations  of  a 
suiier-chivalrous  gallantly,  where  he  replies  to  one  of  the 
sliepherdesses,  apprehensive  that  he  would  spoil  their 
pretty  net-works,  and  inviting  him  to  be  a  guest  with 
them,  in  accents  like  these:  "Tridy,  fairest  Lady,  Actasou 
was  not  more  astonislied  when  he  saw  Diana  bathing 
herself  at  the  foimtain,  than  I  have  been  in  bcliolding 
your  beauty :  I  commend  the  manner  of  your  pastime, 
and  thank  you  for  your  kind  offers  ;  and,  iif  I  may  serve 
you,  so  I  may  be  sure  you  will  be  obeyed,  you  may  com- 
mand me  :  for  my  profession  is  this.  To  show  myself 
thankful,  and  a  doer  of  good  to  all  sorts  of  people, 
especially  of  the  rank  that  your  person  shows  you  to  be ; 
and  if  those  nets,  as  they  take  up  but  a  little  piece  of 
ground,  should  take  up  the  whole  world,  I  would  seek 
out  new  worlds  to  pass  through,  rather  than  break  them : 
and  (he  adds)  that  you  may  give  credit  to  this  my 
exaggeration,  behold  at  least  lie  that  promiseth  you  this, 
is  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  if  haply  this  name  hath 


314  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

come  to  your  hearing."  Illustrious  Romancer  !  were  the 
"  fine  frenzies,"  which  possessed  the  brain  of  thy  own 
Quixote,  a  fit  subject,  as  in  this  Second  Part,  to  be  ex- 
posed to  the  jeers  of  Duennas  and  Serving-men'?  to  be 
monstered,  and  shown  up  at  the  heartless  bancjuets  of 
great  men  ?  Was  that  pitiable  infirmity,  which  in  thy 
First  Part  misleads  him,  ahvays  from  ivitJiin,  into  half- 
ludicrous,  but  more  than  half-compassionable  and  admir- 
able errors,  not  infliction  enough  from  heaven,  that  men 
by  studied  artifices  must  devise  and  practise  upon  the 
humour,  to  inflame  where  they  should  soothe  it  1  Why, 
Goneril  would  have  blushed  to  practise  upon  the  abdi- 
cated king  at  this  rate,  and  the  she -wolf  Regan  not  have 
endxired  to  play  the  pranks  upon  his  fled  wits,  which 
thou  first  made  thy  Quixote  suft'er  in  Duchesses'  halls, 
and  at  the  hands  of  that  unworthy  nobleman.^ 

In  the  First  Adventures,  even,  it  needed  all  the  art  of 
the  most  consummate  artist  in  the  Book  way  that  the 
world  hath  yet  seen,  to  keep  up  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader  the  heroic  attributes  of  the  character  without 
relaxing  ;  so  as  absolutely  that  they  shall  suffer  no  alloy 
from  the  debasing  fellowship  of  the  clown.  If  it  ever 
obtrudes  itself  as  a  disharmony,  are  we  inclined  to  laugh ; 
or  not,  rather,  to  indulge  a  contrary  emotion  1 — Cervantes, 
stung,  perchance,  by  the  relish  with  which  Ms  Reading 
Public  had  received  the  fooleries  of  the  man,  more  to 
their  palates  than  the  generosities  of  the  master,  in  the 
sequel  let  liis  pen  run  riot,  lost  the  harmony  and  the 
balance,  and  sacrificed  a  great  idea  to  the  taste  of  his 
contemporaries.  We  know  that  in  the  present  day  the 
Knight  has  fewer  admirers  than  the  Stpiire.  Anticipat- 
ing, what  did  actually  happen  to  him — as  afterwards  it 
did  to  his  scarce  inferior  follower,  the  Author  of  "  Guz- 
man de  Alf;i,rache  " — -that  some  less  knowing  hand  would 
prevent  him  by  a  spmious  Second  Part ;  and  judging 
that  it  would  be  easier  for  his  competitor  to  outbid  him 

1  Yet  from  this  Second  Part,  our  cried-up  i)ictures  are  mostly- 
selected  ;  the  waitiiig-woineii  witli  lieards,  etc. 


THE  WEDDING.  315 

in  the  comicalities,  than  in  the  romance,  of  his  work,  he 
abandoned  his  Knight,  and  has  fairly  set  up  the  Squire 
for  his  Hero.  For  what  else  has  he  unsealed  the  eyes  of 
Sancho  ?  and  instead  of  that  twilight  state  of  semi- 
insanity — the  madness  at  second-hand  —  the  contagion, 
caught  from  a  stronger  mind  infected — that  war  between 
native  cunning,  and  hereditary  deference,  with  which  he 
has  hitherto  accompanied  his  master — two  for  a  pair 
almost — does  he  substitute  a  downright  Knave,  with 
open  eyes,  for  his  own  ends  only  following  a  confessed 
Madman  ;  and  oftering  at  one  time  to  lay,  if  not  actually 
laying,  hands  upon  him  !  From  the  moment  that  Sancho 
loses  his  reverence,  Don  Quixote  is  become — a  treatable 
lunatic.     Our  artists  hanclle  him  accordingly. 


THE  WEDDING. 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  been  better  pleased  than  at 
being  invited  last  week  to  be  present  at  the  wedding  of 
a  friend's  daughter.  I  like  to  make  one  at  these  cere- 
monies, which  to  Its  old  people  give  back  oiu-  youth  in  a 
manner,  and  restore  our  gayest  season,  in  the  remem- 
brance of  oiir  own  success,  or  the  regrets,  scarcely  less 
tender,  of  om-  own  youthful  disappointments,  in  this 
point  of  a  settlement.  On  these  occasions  I  am  sure  to 
be  in  good  humour  for  a  week  or  two  after,  and  enjoy  a 
reflected  honeymoon.  Being  without  a  family,  I  am 
flattered  with  these  temporaiy  adojltions  into  a  friend's 
family ;  I  feel  a  sort  of  cousinhood,  or  imcleship,  for  the 
season ;  I  am  inducted  into  degrees  of  affinity ;  and,  in 
the  participated  socialities  of  the  little  community,  I  lay 
down  for  a  luief  while  my  solitary  bachelorship.  I  carry 
this  humour  so  for,  that  I  take  it  unkindly  to  be  left  out, 
even  when  a  funeral  is  going  on  in  the  house  of  a  dear 

friend.     But  to  my  subject. 

The  union  itself  litid  been  long  settled,  but  its  cele- 


316  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

hration  had  been  hitherto  deferred,  to  an  almost  unreason- 
able state  of  suspense  in  the  lovers,  by  some  invincible 
prejudices  which  the  bride's  father  had  unhappily  con- 
tracted upon  the  subject  of  the  too  early  marriages  of 
females.  He  has  been  lecturing  any  time  these  five 
years — for  to  that  length  the  coiuiship  had  been  pro- 
tracted—  upon  the  propriety  of  i)utting  off  the  solemnity, 
till  the  lady  should  have  comialeted  her  five-and-twentieth 
year.  We  all  began  to  be  afraid  that  a  suit,  which  as 
yet  had  abated  of  none  of  its  ardours,  might  at  last  be 
lingered  on,  till  passion  had  time  to  cool,  and  love  go  out 
in  the  experiment.  But  a  little  wheedling  on  the  part 
of  his  wife,  who  was  by  no  means  a  party  to  these  over- 
strained notions,  joined  to  some  serious  expostulations  on 
that  of  his  friends,  who,  from  the  growing  infirmities  of 
the  old  gentleman,  coidd  not  promise  ourselves  many 
years'  enjoyment  of  his  company,  and  were  anxious  to 
bring  matters  to  a  conclusion  during  his  lifetime,  at 
length  jirevailed  ;  and  on  Monday  last  the  daughter  of  my 

old  friend.  Admiral ,  having  attained  the  womanly 

age  of  nineteen,  was  conducted  to  the  church  by  her 

pleasant  cousin  J ,  who  told  some  few  years  older. 

Before  the  youthful  part  of  my  female  readers  express 
their  indignation  at  the  abominable  loss  of  time  occa- 
sioned to  the  lovers  by  the  preposterous  notions  of  my 
old  friend,  they  will  do  well  to  consider  the  reluctance 
which  a  fond  parent  naturally  feels  at  parting  with  his 
child.  To  this  unwillingness,  I  believe,  in  most  cases 
may  be  traced  the  difference  of  opinion  on  this  point 
between  child  and  parent,  whatever  pretences  of  interest 
or  prudence  may  be  lield  out  to  cover  it.  The  hard- 
heartedness  of  fathers  is  a  fine  theme  for  romance  writers, 
a  sure  and  moving  topic ;  but  is  there  not  something 
untender,  to  say  no  more  of  it,  in  the  hurry  which  a 
beloved  child  is  sometimes  in  to  tear  herself  from  the 
paternal  stock,  and  commit  herself  to  strange  graftings  1 
The  case  is  heightened  where  the  lady,  as  in  the  present 
instance,  happens  to  be  an  only  child.     I  do  not  under- 


THE  WEDDING.  317 

stand  these  matters  exix'riineiitally,  l»ut  I  oaii  make  a 
shrewd  guess  at  the  wounded  pride  of  a  parent  upon 
these  occasions.  It  is  no  new  observation,  I  believe,  that 
a  lover  in  most  cases  has  no  rival  so  much  to  be  feared 
as  the  father.  Certainly  there  is  a  jealousy  in  unjxirallel 
subjects,  which  is  little  less  heartrending  than  the  passion 
which  we  more  strictly  christen  by  that  name.  Mothers' 
scruples  are  more  easily  got  over ;  for  this  reason,  I 
suppose,  that  the  protection  transferred  to  a  husband  is 
less  a  derogation  and  a  loss  to  theii"  authority  than  to  the 
paternal.  Mothers,  besides,  have  a  trembling  foresight, 
which  paints  the  inconveniences  (impossible  to  be  con- 
ceived in  tlie  same  degree  by  the  other  parent)  of  a  life 
of  forlorn  celibacy,  which  the  refusal  of  a  tolerable  match 
may  entail  upon  their  child.  Mothers'  instinct  is  a  sm-er 
guide  here  than  the  cold  reasonings  of  a  father  on  such  a 
topic.  To  tliis  instinct  may  be  imputed,  and  by  it  alone 
may  be  excused,  the  imbeseeming  artifices,  by  which 
some  wives  push  on  the  matrimonial  projects  of  their 
daughters,  which  the  husband,  however  appicving,  shall 
entertain  with  comparative  indifference.  A  little  shame- 
lessness  on  this  head  is  pardonable.  With  this  explana- 
tion, forwardness  becomes  a  grace,  and  maternal  impor- 
tmiity  receives  the  name  of  a  \artue. — But  the  parson 
stays,  while  I  preposterously  assume  his  office ;  I  am 
preaching,  while  the  bride  is  on  the  threshold. 

Nor  let  any  of  my  female  readers  suppose  that  the 
sage  reflections  which  have  just  escaped  me  have  the 
obliquest  tendency  of  application  to  the  young  lady,  who, 
it  will  be  seen,  is  about  to  venture  upon  a  change  in  her 
condition,  at  a  mature  and  comjyetent  age,  and  not  without 
the  fullest  approbation  of  all  parties.  I  only  deprecate 
very  hasty  marriages. 

It  had  been  fixed  that  the  ceremony  should  be  gone 
through  at  an  early  hour,  to  give  time  for  a  little  cUjeune 
afterwards,  to  wliich  a  select  party  of  friends  had  been 
invited.  We  were  in  chiu'ch  a  little  before  the  clock 
struck  eight. 


318  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Nothing  could  be  mure  judicious  or  graccjful  than  the 
dress  of  the  Ijride-maiils— the  three  charming  Miss 
Foresters  —  on  this  morning.  To  give  the  bride  an 
opportmiity  of  shining  singly,  they  had  come  habited  all 
in  green.  I  am  ill  at  describing  female  apparel ;  but 
while  she  stood  at  the  altar  in  vestments  white  and  can- 
did as  her  thoughts,  a  sacrificial  whiteness,  they  assisted  in 
robes  such  as  might  become  Diana's  nymphs — Foresters 
indeed — as  such  who  had  not  yet  come  to  the  resolution 
of  i»utting  off  cold  virginity.  These  young  maids,  not 
being  so  blest  as  to  have  a  mother  living,  I  am  told,  keep 
single  for  their  father's  sake,  and  live  altogether  so  hap})y 
with  their  remaining  parent,  that  the  hearts  of  their  lovers 
are  ever  broken  witli  the  prospect  (so  inauspicious  to  their 
hopes)  of  such  vminterrupted  and  provoking  home-comfort. 
Gallant  girls  !  each  a  victim  worthy  of  Iphigeuia  ! 

I  do  not  know  what  business  I  have  to  be  present  in 
solemn  places.  I  cannot  divest  me  of  an  unseasonable 
disposition  to  levity  upon  the  most  awful  occasions.  I 
was  never  cut  out  for  a  public  functionary.  Ceremony 
and  I  have  long  shaken  hands ;  but  I  could  not  resist 
the  importunities  of  the  young  lady's  father,  whose  gout 
unhapiDily  confined  him  at  home,  to  act  as  parent  on  tliis 
occasion,  and  give  away  the  hride.  Something  ludicrous 
occurred  to  me  at  this  most  serious  of  all  moments — a 
sense  of  my  unfitness  to  have  the  disposal,  even  in 
imagination,  of  the  sweet  yoimg  creature  beside  me.  I 
fear  I  was  betrayed  to  some  lightness,  for  the  awfid  eye 
of  the  parson — and  the  rector's  eye  of  St.  Mildred's  in 
the  Poultry  is  no  trifle  of  a  rebuke — was  upon  me  in  an 
instant,  souring  my  incipient  jest  to  the  tristful  severities 
of  a  fmieral. 

This  was  the  only  misbehaviour  which  I  can  plead  to 
upon  this  solemn  occasion,  unless  what  was  objected  to 
me  after  the  ceremony,  by  one  of  the  handsome  Miss 

T s,  be  accounted  a  solecism.     She  was  pleased  to 

say  that  she  had  never  seen  a  gentleman  before  me  give 
away  a  bride,  in  black.     Now  black  has  been  my  ordinary 


THE  WEDDING.  319 

api);ircl  so  loug — iiulecd,  I  tali;c  it  to  be  the  proper 
costume  of  an  author — the  stage  sanctions  it — that  to 
have  appeared  in  some  lighter  colour  would  have  raised 
more  mirth  at  my  expense  than  the  anomaly  had  created 
censure.  But  I  could  perceive  that  the  bride's  mother, 
and  some  elderly  lailies  present  (God  bless  them  !)  woidd 
have  been  well  content,  if  I  had  come  in  any  other  colom- 
than  that.  But  I  got  over  the  omen  by  a  lucky  apologue, 
which  I  remembered  out  of  Pilpay,  or  some  Indian  author, 
of  all  the  birds  being  invited  to  the  linnet's  wedding,  at 
which,  when  all  the  rest  came  in  their  gayest  feathers, 
the  raven  alone  ajiologised  for  his  cloak  because  "he  had 
no  other."  This  tolerably  reconciled  the  elders.  But 
with  the  young  people  all  was  merriment,  and  shaking  of 
hands,  and  congratulations,  and  kissing  away  the  bride's 
tears,  and  kissing  from  her  in  return,  till  a  young  lady, 
who  assimied  some  experience  in  these  matters,  having 
worn  the  nuptial  bands  some  fom-  or  five  weeks  longer 
than  her  friend,  rescued  her,  archly  observing,  with  half 
an  eye  i;pon  the  bridegroom,  that  at  this  rate  she  would 
have  "  none  left." 

My  friend  the  Admiral  was  in  fine  wig  and  buckle  on 
this  occasion — a  striking  contrast  to  his  usual  neglect  of 
personal  ap}}earance.  He  did  not  once  shove  up  his  bor- 
rowed locks  (his  custom  ever  at  his  morning  studies)  to 
betray  the  few  gray  stragglers  of  his  own  beneath  them. 
He  wore  an  aspect  of  thoughtful  satisfaction.  I  trembled 
for  the  hour,  which  at  length  approached,  when  after  a 
protracted  breakfast  of  three  hours — if  stores  of  cold 
fowls,  tongues,  hams,  botargoes,  dried  fruits,  wines, 
cordials,  etc.,  can  deserve  so  meagre  an  appellation — the 
coach  was  announced,  which  was  come  to  carry  ofi^  the  bride 
and  bridegroom  for  a  season,  as  custom  has  sensibly  or- 
dained, into  the  coimtry  ;  iipon  which  design,  wishing  them 
a  felicitous  journey,  let  us  return  to  the  assembled  guests. 

As  when  a  well-graced  actor  leaves  the  stage, 

The  eyes  of  men 

Are  idly  bent  on  him  that  enters  next, 


320  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

SO  idly  (lid  wc  bend  our  eyes  upon  one  another,  when  the 
chief  performers  in  the  morning's  pageant  had  vanished. 
None  told  his  tale.  None  sipped  her  glass.  The  poor 
Admiral  made  an  effort — it  was  not  much.  I  had  antici- 
pated so  far.  Even  the  infinity  of  full  satisfaction,  that 
had  betrayed  itself  through  the  prim  looks  and  quiet 
deportment  of  his  lady,  began  to  wane  into  something  of 
misgiving.  No  one  knew  wliether  to  take  their  leave  or 
stay.  We  seemed  assembled  upon  a  silly  occasion.  In 
this  crisis,  betwixt  tarrying  and  de])arture,  I  must  do 
justice  to  a  foolish  talent  of  mine,  which  had  otherwise 
like  to  have  brought  me  into  disgrace  in  the  fore-part  of 
the  day ;  I  mean  a  power,  in  any  emergency,  of  thinking 
and  giving  vent  to  all  manner  of  strange  nonsense.  In 
this  awkward  dilemma  I  found  it  sovereign.  I  rattled 
off  some  of  my  most  excellent  absurdities.  All  were 
willing  to  be  relieved,  at  any  expense  of  reason,  from  the 
pressure  of  the  intolerable  vacuum  which  had  succeeded 
to  the  morning  bustle.  By  this  means  I  was  fortunate 
in  keeping  together  the  better  part  of  the  company  to  a 
late  hour ;  and  a  rubber  of  whist  (the  Admiral's  favom-ite 
game)  with  some  rare  strokes  of  chance  as  well  as  skill, 
which  came  opportunely  on  his  side — lengthened  out  till 
midnight— dismissed  the  old  gentleman  at  last  to  his  bed 
witli  comparatively  easy  spirits. 

I  have  been  at  my  old  friend's  various  times  since.  I 
do  not  know  a  visiting  place  where  every  guest  is  so  per- 
fectly at  his  ease  ;  nowhere,  where  harmony  is  so  strangely 
the  result  of  confusion.  Everybody  is  at  cross  puri:)oses, 
yet  the  effect  is  so  much  better  than  uniformity.  Con- 
tradictory orders  ;  servants  piUling  one  way ;  master  and 
mistress  driving  some  other,  yet  both  diverse;  visitors 
huddled  up  in  corners ;  chairs  unsymmetrized  ;  candles 
disposed  by  chance ;  meals  at  odd  hours,  tea  and  supper 
at  once,  or  the  latter  preceding  the  former ;  the  host  and 
the  guest  conferring,  yet  each  upon  a  different  toitic,  each 
understanding  himself,  neitlier  trying  to  understand  or 
hear  the  other ;  draughts  and  politics,  chess  and  political 


UPON  THE  NEW  YE^Ml'S  COMING  OF  AGE.        321 

economy,  cards  and  conversation  on  nautical  matters, 
going  on  at  once,  without  the  hope,  or  indeed  the  wish, 
of  distinguishing  them,  make  it  altogether  the  most  per- 
fect conccrrdia  discors  you  shall  meet  with.  Yet  some- 
how the  old  house  is  not  quite  what  it  should  be.  The 
Admiral  still  enjoys  his  pipe,  but  he  has  no  Miss  Emilj' 
to  fill  it  for  him.  The  instnunent  stands  where  it  stood, 
])ut  she  is  gone,  whose  delicate  touch  could  sometimes 
for  a  short  minute  appease  the  warring  elements.  He 
has  learnt,  as  Marvel  expresses  it,  to  "  make  his  destiny 
his  choice."  He  bears  bravely  up,  but  he  does  not  come 
out  with  his  flashes  of  wild  wit  so  thick  as  fomierly. 
His  sea-songs  seldomer  escape  him.  His  wife,  too,  looks 
as  if  she  wanted  some  yoimger  body  to  scold  and  set  to 
rights.  We  aU  miss  a  jimior  presence.  It  is  wonderfid 
how  one  young  maiden  freshens  up,  and  keeps  green,  the 
paternal  roof.  Old  and  young  seem  to  have  an  interest 
in  her,  so  long  as  she  is  not  absolutely  disposed  of  The 
youthfulness  of  the  house  is  flown.     Emily  is  married. 


REJOICINGS  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S 
COMING  OF  AGE. 

The  Old  Year  being  dead,  and  the  New  Year  coming  of 
age,  which  he  does,  by  Calendar  Law,  as  soon  as  the 
breath  is  out  of  the  old  gentleman's  body,  nothing  woidd 
serve  the  yoimg  spark  but  he  must  give  a  dinner  upon 
the  occasion,  to  which  aU  the  Days  in  the  year  were  in- 
\'ited.  The  Festivals,  whom  he  deputed  as  his  stewards, 
were  mightily  taken  with  the  notion.  They  had  been 
engaged  time  out  of  mind,  they  said,  in  providing  mirth 
and  good  cheer  for  mortals  below ;  and  it  was  time  they 
should  have  a  taste  of  their  own  bomity.  It  was  stifliy 
debated  among  them  whether  the  Fasts  should  be  ad- 
Y 


322  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

mitted.  Some  said  the  appearance  of  such  lean,  starved 
guests,  with  their  mortified  faces,  would  pervert  the  ends 
of  the  meeting.  But  the  objection  was  overruled  by 
Christmas  Day,  who  had  a  design  upon  Ash  Wednesday 
(as  you  shall  hear),  and  a  mighty  desire  to  see  how  the 
old  Domine  would  behave  himself  in  his  cups.  Only  the 
Vigils  were  requested  to  come  with  their  lanterns,  to 
light  the  gentlefolks  home  at  night. 

All  the  Days  came  to  their  day.  Covers  were  jiro- 
vided  for  three  hundred  and  sixty -five  guests  at  the 
principal  table  ;  with  an  occasional  knife  and  fork  at  the 
side-board  for  the  Tiventy-Ninth  of  Fehmary. 

I  should  have  told  you  that  cards  of  invitation  bad 
been  issued.  The  carriers  were  the  Hours;  twelve  little, 
merry,  whirligig  foot-pages,  as  you  should  desire  to  see, 
that  went  all  round,  and  found  out  the  persons  invited 
well  enough,  with  the  excej^tion  of  Easter  Day,  Shi^ove 
Tuesday,  and  a  few  such  Moveables,  who  had  lately 
shifted  their  quarters. 

Well,  they  all  met  at  last — foid  Days,  fine  Days,  all 
sorts  of  Days,  and  a  rare  din  they  made  of  it.  There 
was  nothing  but.  Hail !  fellow  Day,  well  met — brother 
Day — sister  Day — only  Lady  Day  kept  a  little  on  the 
aloof,  and  seemed  somewhat  scornful.  Yet  some  said 
Twelfth  Day  cut  her  out  and  out,  for  she  came  in  a 
tiffany  suit,  white  and  gold,  like  a  queen  on  a  frost-cake, 
all  royal,  glittering,  and  Epiphanous.  The  rest  came, 
some  in  green,  some  in  white — but  old  Lent  and  his 
family  were  not  yet  out  of  moiu-ning.  Rainy  Days  came 
in,  dripping  ;  and  sunshiny  Days  helped  them  to  change 
their  stockings.  Wedding  Day  was  there  in  his  mar- 
riage finery,  a  little  the  worse  for  wear.  Pay  Day  came 
late,  as  he  always  does ;  and  Doomsday  sent  word — he 
might  be  expected. 

April  Fool  (as  my  young  lord's  jester)  took  upon  him- 
self to  marshal  the  guests,  and  wild  work  he  made  with 
it.  It  would  have  posed  old  Erra  Pater  to  have  found 
out  any  given  Day  in  the  year  to  erect  a  scheme  upon — 


UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR's  COMING  OF  AGE.        323 

good  Dmjs,  bad  DaySj  were  so  shuffled  together,  to  the 
confounding  of  all  sober  horoscoi^y. 

He  had  stuck  the  Twenty-First  of  June  next  to  the 
Twenty-Second  of  December,  and  the  former  looked  like 
a  Mayi^ole  siding  a  marrow-bone.  Ash  Wednesday  got 
wedged  in  (as  was  concerted)  betwixt  Ckristmas  and  Lord 
Mayor's  Days.  Lord  !  how  he  laid  about  him  !  Nothing 
but  barons  of  beef  and  tm-keys  would  go  down  with  him 
—  to  the  great  greasing  and  detriment  of  his  new  sack- 
cloth ]:)ib  and  tucker.  And  still  Christinas  Day  was  at 
his  elbow,  plying  him  with  the  wassail-bowl,  till  he  roared, 
and  hiccupp'd,  and  protested  there  was  no  faith  in  dried 
ling,  but  commended  it  to  the  devil  for  a  sour,  windy, 
acrimonious,  censorious,  hy-po-crit-crit-critical  mess,  and 
no  dish  for  a  gentleman.  Then  he  dipt  his  fist  into  the 
middle  of  the  great  custard  that  stood  before  his  left-hand 
nei(/hhour,  and  daubed  his  hungry  beard  all  over  with  it, 
till  you  would  have  taken  him  for  the  Last  Day  in  De- 
re7nber,  it  so  hung  in  icicles. 

At  another  part  of  the  table,  Shrove  Tuesday  was 
lumping  the  Second  of  September  to  some  cock  broth, — 
wliich  courtesy  the  latter  returned  with  the  delicate  thigh 
of  a  hen  pheasant — so  that  there  was  no  love  lost  for  that 
matter.  The  Last  of  Lent  was  spunging  upon  Shrove-tide's 
pancakes ;  which  Ajwil  Fool  perceiving,  told  him  that 
he  did  well,  for  pancakes  were  proper  to  a  good  fry- 
day. 

In  another  part,  a  hubbub  arose  about  the  Thirtieth 
of  January,  who,  it  seems,  being  a  sour,  puritanic  cha- 
racter, that  thought  nobody's  meat  good  or  sanctified 
enough  for  him,  had  smuggled  into  the  room  a  calf's  head, 
which  he  had  had  cooked  at  home  for  that  piu'pose,  think- 
ing to  feast  thereon  incontinently ;  but  as  it  lay  in  the 
dish,  March  Manyweathers,  who  is  a  very  fine  lady,  and 
subject  to  the  meagrims,  screamed  out  there  was  a  "  human 
head  in  the  platter,"  and  raved  about  Herodias'  daugliter 
to  that  degree,  that  the  obnoxious  viand  was  obliged  to 
be  removed ;  nor  did  she  recover  her  stomach  till  she  had 


324  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

giilped  down  a  Restorative,  confectcd  of  Oak  Apple,  which 
the  merry  Twenty -Ninth  of  May  always  carries  about 
with  him  for  tliat  i^iu-pose. 

The  King's  health  ^  being  called  for  after  this,  a  notable 
dispute  arose  between  the  Twelfth  of  August  (a  zealous 
old  Whig  gentlewoman)  and  the  Twenty  Third  rf  April 
(a  new-fongled  lady  of  the  Tory  stamp),  as  to  which  of 
them  should  have  tlie  lionour  to  propose  it.  August 
grew  hot  upon  the  matter,  affirming  time  out  of  mind  the 
prescriptive  right  to  have  lain  with  her,  till  her  rival  had 
basely  supplanted  her;  whom  she  represented  as  little 
better  than  a  kept  mistress,  who  went  about  hi  fine  clothes, 
while  she  (the  legitimate  Birthday)  had  scarcely  a  rag, 
etc. 

Ap7Hl  Fool,  being  made  mediator,  confirmed  the  right, 
in  the  strongest  form  of  words,  to  the  appellant,  but  de- 
cided for  peace'  sake,  that  the  exercise  of  it  should  remain 
with  the  present  possessor.  At  the  same  time,  he  slyly 
rounded  the  first  lady  in  the  ear,  that  an  action  might 
lie  against  the  Crown  for  hi-geny. 

It  beginning  to  grow  a  little  duskish.  Candlemas  lustily 
bawled  out  for  lights,  which  was  oj^posed  by  all  the  Days, 
who  protested  against  burning  daylight.  Then  fair  water 
was  handed  round  in  silver  ewers,  and  the  same  lady  was 
observed  to  take  an  unusual  time  in  Washing  herself. 

May  Day,  Avith  that  sweetness  which  is  peculiar  to  her, 
in  a  neat  speech  proposing  the  health  of  the  founder, 
crowned  her  goblet  (and  by  her  example  the  rest  of  the 
company)  with  garlands.  This  being  done,  the  lordly 
Neio  Year,  from  the  upper  end  of  the  table,  in  a  cordial 
but  somewhat  lofty  tone,  returned  thanks.  He  felt  proud 
on  an  occasion  of  meeting  so  many  of  his  worthy  fiithcr's 
late  tenants,  promised  to  improve  their  farms,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  abate  (if  anything  was  found  unreasonable) 
in  their  rents. 

At  the  mention  of  this,  the  four  Quarter  Days  invol- 
untarily looked  at  each  other,  and  smiled ;  Aj^ril  Fool 
J  King  George  IV. 


UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.        325 

whistled  to  an  old  time  of  "  New  Brooms  ;"  and  a  surly 
old  rebel  at  the  farther  eud  of  the  table  (who  was  dis- 
covered to  be  no  other  than  the  Fifth  of  Novemher) 
muttered  out,  distinctly  enough  to  be  heard  by  the  whole 
company,  words  to  this  effect — that  "  when  the  old  one 
is  gone,  he  is  a  fool  that  looks  for  a  better."  Which 
nideness  of  his,  tlie  guests  resenting,  unanimously  voted 
his  exiiulsion ;  and  the  malcontent  was  thrust  out  neck 
and  heels  into  the  cellar,  as  the  properest  place  for  such 
a  boutefeu  and  firebrand  as  he  had  shown  himself  to  be. 

Order  being  restored — the  young  lord  (who,  to  say 
truth,  had  been  a  little  raffled,  and  put  beside  his  oratory) 
in  as  few  and  yet  as  obliging  words  as  possible,  assm-ed 
them  of  entire  welcome ;  and,  with  a  graceful  turn,  sing- 
ling out  poor  Tvjcnty-Ninth  of  Fehraary,  that  had  sate  all 
this  while  mumchance  at  the  side-board,  begged  to  couple 
his  health  with  that  of  the  good  company  before  him — 
which  he  drank  accordingly ;  observing  that  he  had  not 
seen  his  honest  face  any  time  these  fom-  years — wdth  a 
mmiber  of  endearing  expressions  besides.  At  the  same 
time  removing  the  solitary  Day  from  the  forlorn  seat 
which  had  been  assigned  him,  he  stationed  him  at  his 
own  board,  somewhere  between  the  Greeh  Calends  and 
Latter  Lavimas. 

Ash  Wednesday  being  now  called  upon  for  a  song, 
with  his  eyes  fast  stuck  in  his  head,  and  as  well  as  the 
Canary  he  had  swallowed  would  give  him  leave,  struck 
up  a  Carol,  which  Christmas  Day  had  taught  him  for  the 
nonce ;  and  was  followed  by  the  latter,  who  gave  "  Mise- 
rere "  in  fine  style,  hitting  off  the  mumping  notes  and 
lengthened  drawl  of  Old  Mortification  with  infinite 
humoirr.  Apj^il  Fool  swore  they  had  exchanged  condi- 
tions ;  but  Good  Friday  was  observed  to  look  extremely 
grave ;  and  Sunday  held  her  fan  before  her  face  that  she 
might  not  be  seen  to  smile. 

Shrove-tide,  Lord  Mayor's  Day,  and  Ap?-il  Fool,  next 
joined  in  a  glee — 

WMcli  is  the  projierest  day  to  drink  ? 


326  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

ill    which    ;ill    the    Days    chiming    in,    made    a    merry 
burden. 

They  next  fell  to  quibl)les  and  conundrums.  The 
question  being  proposed,  who  had  the  greatest  number  of 
followers — the  Quarter  Days  said,  there  coidd  be  no 
question  as  to  that ;  for  they  had  all  the  creditors  in  the 
world  dogging  their  heels.  But  April  Fool  gave  it  in 
favour  of  the  Forty  Days  before  Easter ;  because  the 
debtors  in  all  cases  outnumbered  the  creditors,  and  they 
kept  Lent  all  the  year. 

All  this  while  Valentine's  Day  kept  coiu'ting  pretty 
May,  who  sate  next  him,  slipping  amorous  billets-doux 
under  the  table,  till  the  Doe/  Days  (who  are  natm'ally  of 
a  warm  constitution)  began  to  be  jealous,  and  to  bark  and 
rage  exceedingly.  Ajml  Fool,  who  likes  a  bit  of  sport 
above  measure,  and  had  some  pretensions  to  the  lady  be- 
sides, as  being  but  a  cousin  once  removed, — clapped  and 
halloo'd  them  on ;  and  as  fast  as  their  indignation  cooled, 
those  mad  wags,  the  Ember  Days,  were  at  it  with  their 
bellows,  to  blow  it  into  a  flame  ;  and  all  was  in  a  ferment, 
till  old  Madam  Heptuagesima  (who  boasts  herself  the 
Mother  of  the  Days)  wisely  diverted  the  conversation 
with  a  tedious  tale  of  the  lovers  which  she  could  reckon 
when  she  was  young,  and  of  one  Master  RogeUion  Day 
in  particular,  who  was  for  ever  putting  the  question  to 
her;  but  she  kept  him  at  a  distance,  as  the  chronicle 
would  tell — by  which  I  appreheud  she  meant  the  Al- 
manack. Then  she  rambled  on  to  the  Days  that  were 
gone,  the  good  old  Days,  and  so  to  the  Days  before  the 
Flood — which  plainly  showed  her  old  head  to  be  little 
better  than  crazed  and  doited. 

Day  being  ended,  the  Days  called  for  their  cloaks  and 
greatcoats,  and  took  their  leave.  Lord  Mayor's  Day 
went  off  in  a  Mist,  as  usual ;  Shortest  Day  in  a  deep 
black  Fog,  that  wrapt  the  little  gentleman  all  round  like 
a  hedge-hog.  Two  Vigils — so  watchmen  are  called  in 
heaven — saw  Christmas  Day  safe  home — they  had  been 
used  to  the  business  before.     Another   Vigil — a  stout. 


OLD  CHINA.  327 

sturdy  jiatrole,  called  the  Eve  of  St.  Christopher — seeing 
Ash  Wednesday  in  a  condition  little  better  than  he  should 
be — e'en  whipt  him  over  his  shoulders,  pick-a-back  fashion, 
and  Old  Jlortijication  went  floating  home  singing — 

On  the  bat's  back  I  do  fly, 

and  a  number  of  old  snatches  besides,  between  drunk  and 
sober;  but  very  few  Aves  or  Penitentiaries  (you  may 
believe  me)  were  among  them.  Longest  Day  set  off 
westward  in  beautifid  crimson  and  gold — the  rest,  some 
in  one  fashion,  some  in  another  ;  but  Valentine  and  pretty 
May  took  their  departure  together  in  one  of  the  prettiest 
silvery  twilights  a  Lover's  Day  could  wish  to  set  in. 


OLD  CHINA. 

I  HAVE  an  almost  feminine  partiality  for  old  china. 
When  I  go  to  see  any  great  house,  I  inquire  for  the  china- 
closet,  and  next  for  the  pictm-e-gallery.  I  cannot  defend 
the  order  of  preference,  but  by  sajnng  that  we  have  all 
some  taste  or  other,  of  too  ancient  a  date  to  admit  of 
our  remembering  distinctly  that  it  was  an  acquired  one. 
I  can  call  to  mind  the  fii'st  play,  and  the  first  exhibition, 
that  I  was  taken  to ;  but  I  am  not  conscioiis  of  a  time 
when  china  jars  and  saucers  were  introduced  into  my  im- 
agination. 

I  had  no  repugnance  then — why  should  I  now  have  1 
— to  those  little,  lawless,  azure-tinctured  grotesques,  that, 
under  the  notion  of  men  and  women,  float  about,  uncir- 
cumscribed  by  any  element,  in  that  world  before  perspec- 
tive— a  china  tea-cup. 

I  like  to  see  my  old  friends — whom  distance  cannot 
tliminish. — figiuing  up  in  the  air  (so  they  appear  to  our 
optics),  yet  on  terra  firtiui  still — for  so  we  must  in 
courtesy  interpret  that  speck  of  deeper  blue,  which  the 


328  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

decorous  artist,  to  prevent  absurdity,  had  made  to  spiiug 
up  beneath  their  sandals. 

I  love  the  men  with  women's  faces,  and  the  women,  if 
possible,  with  still  more  womanish  expressions. 

Here  is  a  young  and  courtly  Mandarin,  handing  tea 
to  a  lady  from  a  salver— two  miles  off.  See  how  distance 
seems  to  set  otf  respect  !  And  here  the  same  lady,  or 
another — for  likeness  is  identity  on  tea-cups — is  stepping 
into  a  little  fairy  boat,  moored  on  the  hither  side  of  this 
calm  garden  river,  with  a  dainty  mincing  foot,  which  in 
a  right  angle  of  incidence  (as  angles  go  in  our  world)  must 
infallibly  land  her  in  the  midst  of  a  floweiy  mead  —  a 
furlong  oft"  on  the  other  side  of  the  same  strange  stream  ! 

Farther  on— if  far  or  near  can  be  predicated  of  their 
world — see  horses,  trees,  pagodas,  dancing  the  hays. 

Here — a  cow  and  rabbit  couchant,  and  coextensive — 
so  objects  show,  seen  through  the  lucid  atmosphere  of 
fine  Cathay. 

I  was  pointing  out  to  my  cousin  last  evening,  over  our 
Hyson  (which  we  are  old-fiishioned  enough  to  diiuk  un- 
mixed still  of  an  afternoon),  some  of  these  sjK'ciosa  mii-- 
acula  upon  a  set  of  extraordinary  old  blue  china  (a  recent 
purchase)  which  we  were  now  for  the  first  time  using ; 
and  could  not  help  remarking,  how  favourable  circum- 
stances had  been  to  us  of  late  years,  that  we  could  aftbrd 
to  please  the  eye  sometimes  Avith  trifles  of  this  sort — 
when  a  passing  sentiment  seemed  to  overshade  the  brows 
of  my  companion.  I  am  quick  at  detecting  these  sum- 
mer clouds  in  Bridget. 

"  I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again,"  she 
said,  "  when  we  were  not  qiiite  so  rich.  I  do  not  mean 
that  I  want  to  be  poor ;  but  there  was  a  middle  state" — 
so  she  was  pleased  to  ramble  on, — "  in  which  I  am  sure 
we  were  a  great  deal  happier.  A  purchase  is  but  a  pur- 
chase, now  that  you  have  money  enough  and  to  spare. 
Formerly  it  used  to  be  a  triumph.  When  we  coveted  a 
cheap  luxury  (and,  0  !  how  much  ado  I  had  to  get  you 
to  consent  in  those  times  !) — we  were  used  to  have  a 


OLD  CHINA.  329 

debate  two  or  three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the  for  autl 
against,  and  think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and 
what  saving  we  could  hit  upon,  that  shoidd  be  an  equi- 
valent. A  thing  was  worth  buying  then,  when  we  felt 
the  money  that  we  paid  for  it. 

"  Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit,  which  you  made 
to  hang  upon  you,  till  all  yom-  friends  cried  shame  upon 
you,  it  grew  so  threadbare — and  all  because  of  that  folio 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  which  you  di-agged  home  late  at 
night  from  Barker's  in  Covent  Garden  1  Do  you  remem- 
ber how  we  eyed  it  for  weeks  before  we  coidd  make  up 
om-  minds  to  the  purchase,  and  had  not  come  to  a  deter- 
mination till  it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the  Satmxlay 
night,  when  you  set  off  from  Islington,  fearing  you  shoidd 
be  too  late — and  when  the  old  bookseller  mth  some 
gnunbUng  opened  his  shop,  and  by  the  twinkling  taper 
(for  he  was  setting  bedwards)  lighted  out  the  relic  from 
his  dusty  treasures — and  when  you  lugged  it  home, 
wishing  it  were  twice  as  cumbersome — and  when  you 
presented  it  to  me — and  when  we  were  exploring  the 
perfectness  of  it  {collating,  you  called  it) — and  while  I 
was  repauing  some  of  the  loose  leaves  with  paste,  which 
your  impatience  woidd  not  suffer  to  be  left  till  day- break 
— was  there  no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man  1  or  can 
those  neat  black  clothes  which  you  wear  now,  and  are  so 
carefid  to  keep  brushed,  since  we  have  become  rich  and 
finical —  give  you  half  the  honest  vanity  with  which  you 
flaimted  it  about  in  that  ovei-worn  suit — yoiu-  old  cor- 
beau — for  four  or  five  weeks  longer  than  you  shoidd 
have  done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the  mighty  siuu 
of  fifteen — or  sixteen  shillings  was  it  1 — a  gi'eat  aftair 
we  thought  it  then  —  which  you  had  lavished  on  the  old 
folio.  Now  you  can  afford  to  buy  any  book  that  pleases 
you,  but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever  bring  me  home  any 
nice  old  purchases  now. 

"  When  you  came  home  with  twenty  apologies  for 
laying  out  a  less  number  of  shillings  upon  that  print  after 
Lionardo,    which   we   christened   the    '  Lady   Blanch ; ' 


330  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

when  you  looked  at  the  purchase,  and  thought  of  tlie 
money — and  thought  of  the  money,  and  looked  again  at 
the  pictiu-e — was  there  no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man  1 
Now,  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  walk  into  Colnaghi's, 
and  buy  a  wilderness  of  Lionardos.     Yet  do  you  1 

"  Then,  do  you  remember  our  pleasant  walks  to 
Eniield,  and  Potter's  bar,  and  Waltham,  when  we  had  a 
holyday — -holydays  and  all  other  fun  are  gone  now  we 
are  rich — and  the  little  hand -basket  in  which  I  used  to 
deposit  our  day's  fare  of  savoury  cold  lamb  and  salad — ■ 
and  how  you  woidd  pry  about  at  noon -tide  for  some 
decent  house,  where  we  might  go  in  and  produce  our 
store — only  paying  for  the  ale  that  you  must  call  for — 
and  specidate  upon  the  looks  of  the  landlady,  and  whether 
she  was  likely  to  allow  us  a  tablecloth  —  and  wish  for 
such  another  honest  hostess  as  Izaak  Walton  has  de- 
scribed many  a  one  on  the  pleasant  banks  of  the  Lea, 
when  he  went  a-fishing — and  sometimes  they  would 
prove  obliging  enough,  and  sometimes  they  woidd  look 
gnidgingly  upon  us — but  we  had  cheerful  looks  still  for 
one  another,  and  w^oidd  eat  our  plain  food  savourily, 
scarcely  grudging  Piscator  his  Trout  Hall  1  Now  — 
when  we  go  out  a  day's  pleasuring,  which  is  seldom, 
moreover,  we  ride  part  of  the  way,  and  go  into  a  fine 
inn,  and  order  the  best  of  dinners,  never  debating  the 
expense — which,  after  all,  never  has  half  the  relish  of 
those  chance  country  snaps,  when  we  were  at  the  mercy 
of  uncertain  usage,  and  a  precarious  welcome. 

"  You  are  too  proud  to  see  a  jilay  anywhere  now  but 
in  the  pit.  Do  you  remember  where  it  was  we  used  to 
sit,  when  we  saw  the  battle  of  Hexham,  and  the  Sur- 
rend(;r  of  Calais,  and  Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland  in  the 
Children  in  the  Wood — when  we  squeezed  out  om*  shil- 
lings apiece  to  sit  three  or  four  times  in  a  season  in  the 
one-shilling  galleiy — where  you  felt  all  the  time  that  you 
ought  not  to  have  brought  me — and  more  strongly  I  felt 
obligation  to  you  for  having  brought  me — and  the  pleasure 
was  the  better  for  a  little  shame — and  when  the  curtain 


OLD  CHINA.  331 

(hew  up,  \\luit  cared  we  for  our  place  in  the  house,  or 
what  mattered  it  where  we  were  sitting,  when  our 
thoughts  were  Avith  Rosalind  in  Arden,  or  with  Viola  at 
the  Court  of  Illyria  1  You  used  to  say  that  the  Gallery- 
was  the  best  place  of  all  for  enjopug  a  play  socially — 
that  the  relish  of  such  exhibitions  must  be  in  proportion 
to  the  iufrequency  of  going — that  the  company  we  met 
there,  not  being  in  general  readers  of  plays,  were  obliged 
to  attend  the  more,  and  did  attend,  to  what  was  going 
on,  on  the  stage — because  a  word  lost  would  have  been 
a  chasm,  which  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  fill  up. 
With  such  reflections  we  consoled  om-  pride  then — and  I 
appeal  to  you  whether,  as  a  woman,  I  met  generally  \\'ith 
less  attention  and  accommodation  than  I  have  done  since 
in  more  expensive  situations  in  the  house  1  The  getting 
in,  indeed,  and  the  crowding  up  those  inconvenient  stair- 
cases, was  bad  enough — but  there  was  still  a  law  of 
civility  to  woman  recognized  to  quite  as  great  an  extent 
as  we  ever  found  in  the  other  passages — and  how  a  little 
difficidty  overcome  heightened  the  snug  seat  and  the 
play,  afteiivards  !  Now  we  can  only  pay  oiu-  money  and 
walk  in.  You  cannot  see,  you  say,  in  the  galleries  now. 
I  am  sure  we  saw,  and  heard  too,  well  enough  then — but 
sight,  and  all,  I  tliink,  is  gone  with  om-  poverty. 

"  There  was  pleasm-e  in  eating  strawberries,  before 
they  became  quite  common — in  the  first  dish  of  peas, 
while  they  were  yet  dear — to  have  them  for  a  nice 
supper,  a  treat.  What  treat  can  we  have  now  ?  If  we 
were  to  treat  ourselves  now — that  is,  to  have  dainties  a 
little  above  our  means,  it  would  be  seliish  and  wicked. 
It  is  the  very  little  more  that  we  allow  ourselves  beyond 
what  the  actual  poor  can  get  at,  that  makes  what  I  call 
a  treat — when  two  people,  living  together  as  we  have 
done,  now  and  then  indulge  themselves  in  a  cheap  luxun,^, 
which  both  like ;  while  each  apologizes,  and  is  willing  to 
take  both  halves  of  the  blame  to  his  single  share.  I  see 
no  harm  in  people  making  much  of  themselves,  in  that 
sense  of  the  word.     It  may  give  them  a  hint  how  to 


332  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

make  much  of  otlicrs.  But  now — what  I  mean  by  the 
word — we  never  do  make  much  of  oui-selves.  None  but 
the  poor  can  do  it.  I  do  not  mean  the  veriest  poor  of 
all,  but  persons  as  we  were,  just  above  poverty. 

"  I  know  wha,t  you  were  going  to  say,  that  it  is 
mighty  pleasant  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  all  meet, 
— and  much  ado  we  used  to  have  every  Thirty-first 
Night  of  December  to  account  for  our  exceedings — many 
a  long  face  did  you  make  over  your  piizzled  accounts,  and 
in  contriving  to  make  it  out  how  we  had  spent  so  much — 
or  that  we  had  not  spent  so  much  —  or  that  it  was 
impossible  we  shoiUd  spend  so  much  next  year — and 
still  we  found  ovu*  slender  capital  decreasing — but  then, 
— betwixt  ways,  and  projects,  and  compromises  of  one 
sort  or  another,  and  talk  of  curtailing  this  charge,  and 
doing  without  that  for  the  future — and  the  hope  that 
youth  brings,  and  laughing  spirits  (in  which  you  were 
never  poor  till  now),  we  pocketed  up  our  loss,  and  in 
conclusion,  with  '  lusty  brimmers '  (as  you  used  to  quote 
it  out  of  hearty  cheerful  Mr.  Cotton,  as  you  called  him), 
we  used  to  welcome  in  the  '  coming  guest.'  Now  we 
have  no  reckoning  at  all  at  the  end  of  the  old  year — no 
flattering  promises  about  the  new  year  doing  better  for  us." 
Bridget  is  so  sparing  of  her  speech  on  most  occasions, 
that  when  she  gets  into  a  rhetorical  vein,  I  am  carefid 
how  I  interrupt  it.  I  could  not  help,  however,  smiling 
at  the  phantom  of  wealth  which  her  dear  imagination 

had  conjured  up  out  of  a  clear  income  of  poor 

hundred  pounds  a  year.  "It  is  true  we  were  happier 
when  we  were  poorer,  but  we  were  also  younger,  my 
cousin.  I  am  afraid  we  must  put  up  with  the  excess,  for 
if  we  were  to  shake  the  superflux  into  the  sea,  we  should 
not  much  mend  ourselves.  That  we  had  much  to  struggle 
with,  as  we  grew  up  together,  we  have  reason  to  be  most 
thankful.  It  strengthened  and  knit  our  compact  closer. 
We  could  never  have  been  what  we  have  been  to  each 
other,  if  we  had  always  had  the  sufficiency  which  you 
now  complain  of.     The  resisting  power — those  uatm-al 


THE  CHILD  ANGEL;  A  DRK-VM.  333 

dilations  of  the  youthful  spirit,  which  circumstances 
cannot  straiten — wdth  us  are  long  since  passed  away. 
Competence  to  age  is  supplementaiy  youth,  a  sorry 
supplement  indeed,  but  I  fear  the  best  that  is  to  be  had. 
We  must  ride  where  we  formerly  walked :  live  better 
and  lie  softer — and  shall  be  wise  to  do  so — than  we 
had  means  to  do  in  those  good  old  days  you  speak  of. 
Yet  could  those  days  return — coidd  you  and  I  once  more 
walk  our  thirty  mUes  a  day — coidd  Bannister  and  Mrs. 
Bland  again  be  yoimg,  and  you  and  I  be  young  to  see 
them — could  the  good  old  one -shilling  gallery  days  re- 
turn— they  are  dreams,  my  cousin,  now — but  could  you 
and  I  at  this  moment,  instead  of  this  quiet  argiuncut,  by 
our  well-carpeted  fireside,  sitting  on  this  luxm'ious  sofa — 
be  once  more  stniggling  up  those  inconvenient  staircases, 
IJushed  about  and  squeezed,  and  elbowed  by  the  poorest 
rabble  of  poor  gallery  scramblers — could  I  once  more 
hear  those  anxious  shrieks  of  yoiu^ — and  the  delicious 
Tlmnk  God,  we  are  safe,  which  always  followed  when 
the  topmost  stair,  conquered,  let  in  the  first  light  of  the 
whole  cheerfid  theatre  down  beneath  us — I  know  not 
the  fiithom  line  that  ever  touched  a  descent  so  deep  as  I 
would  be  willing  to  bmy  more  wealth  in  than  Croesus 

had,  or  the  great  Jew  R is  supposed  to  have,  to 

piu-chase  it.  And  now  do  just  look  at  that  merry  little 
Chinese  waiter  holding  an  umbrella,  big  enough  for  a 
bed -tester,  over  the  head  of  that  pretty  insipid  half 
Madonna-ish  chit  of  a  lady  in  that  veiy  blue  smnmer- 
house." 


THE  CHILD  ANGEL ;  A  DREAM. 

I  CHANCED  upon  the  prettiest,  oddest,  fantastical  thing 
of  a  dream  the  other  night,  that  you  shall  hear  of.  I 
had  been  reading  the  "  Loves  of  the  Angels,"  and  went 
to  bed  -with  my  head  full  of  speculations,  suggested  by 


334  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

that  extraordiuary  legend.  It  liad  given  birth  to  innu- 
merable conjectures  ;  and,  I  remember  the  last  waking 
thouglit,  which  I  gave  expression  to  on  my  pillow,  was  a 
sort  of  wonder,   "  what  could  come  of  it." 

I  was  suddenly  transported,  how  or  whither  I  could 
scarcely  make  out — but  to  some  celestial  region.  It  was 
not  the  real  heavens  neither — not  the  downright  Bible 
heaven — -but  a  kind  of  fairyland  heaven,  about  which  a 
poor  human  fancy  may  have  leave  to  sport  and  air  itself, 
I  will  hope,  without  presumption. 

Methought — what  wild  things  dreams  are  ! — I  was 
present — at  what  would  you  imagine  ? — at  an  angel's 
gossiping. 

Whence  it  came,  or  how  it  came,  or  who  bid  it  come, 
or  whether  it  came  pm-ely  of  its  own  head,  neither  you 
nor  I  know — but  there  lay,  sure  enough,  wrapt  in  its 
little  cloudy  swaddling-bands — a  Child  Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy  beams — ran  through  the  celestial 
napery  of  what  seemed  its  princely  cradle.  All  the 
winged  orders  hovered  round,  watching  when  the  new 
born  should  open  its  yet  closed  eyes  ;  which,  when  it 
did,  first  one,  and  then  the  other — with  a  solicitude  and 
apprehension,  yet  not  such  as,  stained  with  fear,  dim  the 
expanding  eyelids  of  mortal  infants,  but  as  if  to  explore 
its  path  in  those  its  unhereditary  palaces — what  an  inex- 
tinguishable titter  that  time  spared  not  celestial  visages  ! 
Nor  wanted  there  to  my  seeming — 0,  the  inexplicable 
simpleness  of  dreams  ! — bowls  of  that  cheering  nectar, 

— which  mortals  caudle  call  below. 

Nor  were  wanting  faces  of  female  ministrants, — stricken 
in  years,  as  it  might  seem, — so  dexterous  were  those 
heavenly  attendants  to  counterfeit  kindly  similitudes  of 
earth,  to  greet  with  terrestrial  child -rites  the  young 
present,  which  earth  had  made  to  heaven. 

Tlien  were  celestial  harpings  heard,  not  in  fidl  sym- 
phony, as  those  by  which  the  spheres  are  tutored  ;  but, 
as  loudest  instruments  on  earth  speak  oftentimes,  muffled; 


THE  CHILD  ANGEL  ;   A  DREAM.  335 

SO  to  accommodate  their  soinid  the  better  to  the  Aveak 
ears  of  the  imperfect-born.  Aud,  with  the  noise  of  these 
subdued  soimdings,  the  Angelet  sprang  forth,  fluttering 
its  rudiments  of  pinions — but  forthwith  ilagged  and  was 
recovered  into  the  arms  of  those  fidl- winged  angels. 
And  a  wonder  it  was  to  see  how,  as  years  went  roimd  in 
heaven — a  year  in  di-eams  is  as  a  day — continually  its 
white  shoulders  put  forth  buds  of  wings,  but  wanting  the 
perfect  angelic  nutriment,  anon  was  shorn  of  its  aspiring, 
and  fell  fluttering — still  caught  by  angel  hands,  for  ever 
to  put  forth  shoots,  and  to  foil  fluttering,  because  its 
birth  was  not  of  the  immixed  vigour  of  heaven. 

And  a  name  was  given  to  the  Babe  Angel,  and  it  was  to 
be  caUed  Ge-Urania,  because  its  production  was  of  earth 
and  heaven. 

And  it  could  not  taste  of  death,  by  reason  of  its  adop- 
tion into  immortal  palaces  ;  but  it  was  to  know  weakness, 
and  reliance,  and  the  shadow  of  hmnan  imbecdity ;  and 
it  went  with  a  lame  gait ;  but  in  its  goings  it  exceeded 
all  mortal  children  in  grace  and  swiftness.  Then  pity 
fii-st  sprang  up  in  angelic  bosoms  ;  and  yearnings  (like 
the  human)  touched  them  at  the  sight  of  the  immortal 
lame  one. 

And  with  pain  did  then  first  those  Intuitive  Essences, 
with  pain  and  strife  to  their  natures  (not  grief),  put  Ijack 
their  bright  intelligences,  and  reduce  their  ethereal  minds, 
schooUng  them  to  degrees  and  slower  processes,  so  to 
adapt  their  lessons  to  the  gradual  ilhmiination  (as  must 
needs  be)  of  the  half- earth- born  ;  and  what  intuitive 
notices  they  could  not  repel  (by  reason  that  their  nature 
is,  to  know  all  things  at  once)  the  half-heavenly  novice, 
by  the  better  part  of  its  nature,  aspired  to  receive  into  its 
understanding  ;  so  that  Hiunility  and  Aspiration  went  on 
even-paced  in  the  instruction  of  the  glorious  Amphibiiim. 

But,  by  reason  that  Matm-e  Hiunanity  is  too  gross  to 
breathe  the  air  of  that  super-subtile  region,  its  portion 
was,  and  is,  to  be  a  child  for  ever. 

And  because  the  hmnan  part  of  it  might  not  press  into 


33G  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELTA. 

the  heart  and  inwards  of  the  palace  of  its  adoption,  those 
full-natiu-ed  angels  tended  it  by  turns  in  the  purlieus  of 
the  palace,  where  were  shady  groves  and  rivulets,  like 
this  green  earth  from  which  it  came ;  so  Love,  with 
Voluntary  Himiility,  waited  upon  the  entertainment  of 
the  new-adopted. 

And  myriads  of  years  rolled  round  (in  dreams  Time  is 
nothing),  and  still  it  kept,  and  is  to  keep,  perpetual  child- 
hood, and  is  the  Tutelar  Genius  of  Childhood  upon  earth, 
and  still  goes  lame  and  lovely. 

By  the  banks  of  the  river  Pison  is  seen,  lone  sitting 
by  the  grave  of  the  terrestrial  Adah,  whom  the  angel 
Nadir  loved,  a  Child  ;  but  not  the  same  which  I  saw  in 
heaven.  A  mournful  hue  overcasts  its  lineaments  ;  never- 
theless, a  correspondency  is  between  the  child  by  the  grave, 
and  that  celestial  orphan,  whom  I  saw  above  ;  and  the 
dimness  of  the  grief  upon  the  heavenly,  is  a  shadow  or 
emblem  of  that  which  stains  the  beauty  of  the  terrestrial. 
And  this  correspondency  is  not  to  be  understood  but  by 
dreams. 

And  in  the  archives  of  heaven  I  had  grace  to  read,  how 
that  once  the  angel  Nadir,  being  exiled  from  his  place  for 
mortal  passion,  upspringing  on  the  wings  of  parental  love 
(such  power  had  parental  love  for  a  moment  to  suspend 
the  else-irrevocable  law)  appeared  for  a  brief  instant  in 
his  station,  and,  depositing  a  wondrous  Birth,  straightway 
disappeared,  and  the  palaces  knew  him  no  more.  And 
this  charge  was  the  self-same  Babe,  who  goeth  lame  and 
lovely — but  Adah  sleepeth  by  the  river  Pison. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD. 

Dehortations  from  the  use  of  strong  liquors  have  been 
the  favoiu-ite  topic  of  solier  declaimcrs  in  all  ages,  and 
have  boon  received  with  abundance  of  applause  by  water- 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  337 

driukiiig  critics.  But  with  the  i^atieut  Ininsclf,  the  man 
that  is  to  be  ciu'cd,  uufortiinately  their  sound  lias  seldom 
prevailed.  Yet  the  evil  is  acknowledged,  the  remedy- 
simple.  Abstain.  No  force  can  oblige  a  man  to  raise 
the  glass  to  his  head  against  his  will.  'Tis  as  easy  as 
not  to  steal,  not  to  tell  lies. 

Alas  !  the  hand  to  pilfer,  and  the  tongue  to  bear  false 
witness,  have  no  constitutional  tendency.  These  are 
actions  indifferent  to  them.  At  the  first  instance  of  the 
reformed  will,  they  can  be  brought  oft'  Avithout  a  miu-mm-. 
The  itching  finger  is  but  a  figure  in  speech,  and  the 
tongue  of  the  liar  can  with  the  same  natm-al  delight  give 
forth  usefid  tniths  with  which  it  has  been  accustomed  to 
scatter  their  pernicious  contraries.  But  when  a  man  has 
commenced  sot 

0  pause,  thou  stmxly  moralist,  thou  person  of  stout 
nerves  and  a  strong  head,  whose  liver  is  happily  untouched, 
and  ere  thy  gorge  riseth  at  the  naine  which  I  had  written, 
fii-st  learn  what  the  thing  is  ;  how  much  of  compassion, 
how  much  of  hmiian  allowance,  thou  may  est  virtuously 
mingle  with  thy  disapprobation.  Trample  not  on  the 
ruins  of  a  man.  Exact  not,  under  so  terrible  a  penalty 
as  infamy,  a  resuscitation  from  a  state  of  death  almost 
as  real  as  that  from  which  Lazarus  rose  not  but  hj  a 
mu'acle. 

Begin  a  reformation,  and  custom  will  make  it  easy. 
But  what  if  the  beginning  be  dreadful,  the  first  steps  not 
like  climbing  a  mountain  but  going  through  fire  1  what  if 
the  whole  system  must  undergo  a  change  violent  as  that 
which  we  conceive  of  the  mutation  of  form  in  some  insects  ? 
what  if  a  process  comparable  to  flaying  alive  be  to  be 
gone  through  ?  is  the  weakness  that  sinks  under  such 
stmggles  to  be  coufoimded  with  the  pertinacity  which 
clings  to  other  ^aces,  which  have  induced  no  constitutional 
necessity,  no  engagement  of  the  whole  victim,  body  and 
soul? 

1  have  knowir  one  in  that  state,  when  he  has  tried  to 
abstain  but  for  one  evening, — though  the  poisonous  potion 

z 


o38  THE  ESSAY8  OF  ELIA.. 

hiid  long  ceased  to  bring  liack  its  first  cncliantments, 
though  he  was  sure  it  would  rather  deepen  his  gloom 
than  brighten  it, — in  the  violence  of  the  struggle,  and 
the  necessity  he  had  felt  of  getting  rid  of  the  present 
sensation  at  any  rate,  I  have  known  him  to  scream  out, 
to  cry  aloud,  for  the  anguish  and  pain  of  the  strife  within 
him. 

Why  should  I  hesitate  to  declare,  that  the  man  of 
whom  I  speak  is  myself  1  I  have  no  puling  apology  to 
make  to  mankind.  I  see  them  all  in  one  way  or  another 
deviating  from  the  pure  reason.  It  is  to  my  own  nature 
alone  I  am  accountable  for  the  woe  that  I  have  brought 
upon  it. 

I  believe  that  there  are  constitutions,  robust  heads 
and  iron  insides,  whom  scarce  any  excesses  can  hurt ; 
whom  brandy  (I  have  seen  them  drinlc  it  like  wine),  at 
all  events  whom  wine,  taken  in  ever  so  plentiful  a  measure, 
can  do  no  worse  injury  to  than  just  to  muddle  their  facul- 
ties, perhaps  never  very  pellucid.  On  them  this  discourse 
is  wasted.  They  would  but  laugh  at  a  weak  brother, 
who,  trying  his  strength  with  them,  and  coming  oft'  foiled 
from  the  contest,  would  fain  persuade  them  that  such 
agonistic  exercises  are  dangerous.  It  is  to  a  very  different 
description  of  persons  I  speak.  It  is  to  the  weak — the 
nervous  ;  to  those  who  feel  the  want  of  some  artificial  aid 
to  raise  their  spirits  in  society  to  what  is  no  more  than 
the  ordinary  pitch  of  all  around  them  without  it.  This 
is  the  secret  of  our  drinking.  Such  must  fly  the  convivial 
board  in  the  first  instance,  if  they  do  not  mean  to  sell 
themselves  for  term  of  life. 

Twelve  years  ago  I  had  completed  my  six-and-twentieth 
year.  I  had  lived  from  the  period  of  leaving  school  to 
that  time  pretty  much  in  solitude.  My  companions  were 
chiefly  books,  or  at  most  one  or  two  living  ones  of  my 
own  book-loving  and  sober  stamp.  I  rose  early,  went  to 
bed  betimes,  and  the  faculties  which  God  had  given  me, 
I  have  reason  to  think,  did  not  rust  in  me  unused. 

About  that  time  I  fell  in  with  some  companions  of  a 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  339 

difterent  order.  They  were  men  of  boisterous  spirits, 
sitters  up  ;i-uiglits,  disputants,  drunken  ;  yet  seemed  to 
have  something  noble  about  them.  We  dealt  about  the 
wit,  or  what  passes  for  it  after  midnight,  jovially.  Of 
the  quality  called  fancy  I  certainly  possessed  a  larger  share 
than  my  companions.  Encom'aged  by  theu-  applause,  I 
set  up  for  a  professed  joker  !  I,  who  of  all  men  am  least 
fitted  for  such  an  occupation,  having,  in  addition  to  the 
greatest  difficulty  which  I  experience  at  all  times  of  find- 
ing words  to  express  my  meaning,  a  natm-al  nervous  im- 
pediment in  my  speech ! 

Reader,  if  you  are  gifted  with  nerves  like  mine,  aspire 
to  any  character  but  that  of  a  wit.  When  you  find  a 
tickling  relish  upon  yom-  tongue  disposing  you  to  that 
sort  of  conversation,  especially  if  you  find  a  preternatm-al 
flow  of  ideas  setting  in  upon  you  at  the  sight  of  a  bottle 
and  fresh  glasses,  avoid  giving  way  to  it  as  you  woidd 
fly  your  greatest  destruction.  If  you  cannot  crush  the 
power  of  fancy,  or  that  within  you  which  you  mistake  for 
such,  divert  it,  give  it  some  other  play.  Write  an  essay, 
pen  a  character  or  description, — but  not  as  I  do  now, 
with  tears  trickling  down  yom*  cheeks. 

To  be  an  object  of  comi^assion  to  friends,  of  derision 
to  foes  ;  to  be  suspected  by  strangers,  stared  at  by  fools ; 
to  be  esteemed  dull  when  you  cannot  be  witty,  to  be  ap- 
plauded for  witty  when  you  know  that  you  have  been 
dull ;  to  be  called  upon  for  the  extemporaneous  exercise 
of  that  faculty  which  no  premeditation  can  give ;  to  be 
spm*red  on  to  eftbrts  which  end  in  contempt ;  to  be  set 
on  to  provoke  mirth  which  procures  the  procurer  hatred ; 
to  give  pleasure  and  be  paid  with  sqixinting  malice ; 
to  swallow  draughts  of  life-destroying  wine  which  are  to 
be  distilled  into  airy  breath  to  tickle  vain  auditors  ;  to 
mortgage  miserable  morrows  for  nights  of  madness ;  to 
waste  whole  seas  of  time  upon  those  who  pay  it  back  in 
little  inconsiderable  drops  of  grudging  applause, — are  the 
wages  of  bidfoonciy  and  death. 

Time,  which  has  a  sure  stroke  at  dissolving  all  con- 


340  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

nections  which  have  no  solider  fastening  than  this  liquid 
cement,  more  kind  to  me  than  my  own  taste  or  penetra- 
tion, at  length  oi^ened  my  eyes  to  the  supposed  qualities 
of  my  first  friends.  No  trace  of  them  is  left  but  in  the 
vices  which  they  introduced,  and  the  habits  they  infixed. 
In  them  my  friends  survive  still,  and  exercise  amjjle  re- 
tribution for  any  supposed  infidelity  that  I  may  have  been 
guilty  of  towards  them. 

My  next  more  immediate  companions  were  and  are 
persons  of  such  intrinsic  and  felt  worth,  that  though 
accidentally  their  acquaintance  has  proved  pernicious  to 
me,  I  do  not  know  that  if  the  thing  were  to  do  over  again,  I 
should  have  the  courage  to  eschew  the  mischief  at  the  price 
of  forfeiting  the  benefit.  I  came  to  them  reeking  from  the 
steams  of  my  late  over-heated  notions  of  companionship  ; 
and  the  slightest  fuel  which  they  unconsciously  afforded, 
was  sufficient  to  feed  my  own  fires  into  a  propensity. 

They  were  no  drinkers ;  but,  one  from  professional 
habits,  and  another  from  a  custom  derived  from  his  father, 
smoked  tobacco.  The  devil  could  not  have  devised  a 
more  subtle  trap  to  re-take  a  backsliding  penitent.  The 
transition,  from  gulping  down  draughts  of  liquid  fire  to 
puffing  out  innocuous  blasts  of  dry  smoke,  was  so  like 
cheating  him.  But  he  is  too  hard  for  us  when  we  hope 
to  commute.  He  beats  us  at  barter ;  and  when  we  think 
to  set  ofi:"  a  new  failing  against  an  old  infirmity,  'tis  odds 
but  he  puts  the  trick  upon  us  of  two  for  one.  That 
(comparatively)  white  devil  of  tobacco  brought  with  him 
in  the  end  seven  worse  than  himself 

It  were  impertinent  to  carry  the  reader  through  all 
the  processes  by  which,  from  smoking  at  first  with  malt 
liquor,  I  took  my  degrees  through  thin  wines,  through 
stronger  wine  and  water,  through  small  i)unch,  to  those 
juggling  compositions,  which,  under  the  name  of  mixed 
liquors,  slur  a  great  deal  of  brandy  or  other  poison  under 
less  and  less  water  continually,  until  they  come  next  to 
none,  and  so  to  none  at  all.  But  it  is  hateful  to  disclose 
the  secrets  of  my  Tartarus. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DPaiNKAKD.  341 

I  should  repel  my  readers,  from  a  mere  incapacity  of 
believing  me,  were  I  to  tell  them  what  tobacco  has  been 
to  me,  the  drudging  service  which  I  have  paid,  the  slavery 
which  I  have  vowed  to  it.  How,  when  I  have  resolved 
to  quit  it,  a  feeling  as  of  ingratitude  has  started  up  ;  how 
it  has  put  on  personal  claims  and  made  the  demands  of  a 
friend  upon  me.  How  the  reading  of  it  casually  in  a 
book,  as  where  Adams  takes  his  whiff  in  the  chimney- 
corner  of  some  inn  in  Josejih  Andrews,  or  Piscator  in  the 
Complete  Angler  breaks  his  fost  upon  a  moniing  pipe  in 
that  delicate  room  Piscatoribus  Sacrum,  has  in  a  moment 
broken  do^vn  the  resistance  of  weeks.  How  a  pipe  was 
ever  in  my  midnight  path  before  me,  till  the  vision  forced 
me  to  realise  it, — how  then  its  ascending  vapoiu-s  cm-led, 
its  fragrance  lulled,  and  the  thousand  delicious  minister- 
ings  conversant  about  it,  employing  every  foculty,  ex- 
tracted the  sense  of  pain.  How  from  illuminating  it 
came  to  darken,  from  a  quick  solace  it  turned  to  a  nega- 
tive relief,  thence  to  a  restlessness  and  dissatisfaction, 
thence  to  a  positive  miseiy.  How,  even  now,  when  the 
whole  secret  stands  confessed  in  all  its  dreadful  tnith 
before  me,  I  feel  mysehE"  linked  to  it  beyond  the  power  of 
revocation.     Bone  of  my  bone 

Persons  not  accustomed  to  examine  the  motives  of 
their  actions,  to  reckon  up  the  countless  nails  that  rivet 
the  chains  of  habit,  or  perhaps  being  boimd  by  none  so 
obdurate  as  those  I  have  confessed  to,  may  recoil  from 
this  as  from  an  overcharged  pictiu-e.  But  what  short  of 
such  a  bondage  is  it,  which  in  spite  of  protesting  friends, 
a  weeping  wife,  and  a  reprobating  world,  chains  down 
many  a  poor  fellow,  of  no  original  indisposition  to  good- 
ness, to  his  pipe  and  his  pot  1 

I  have  seen  a  print  after  Correggio,  in  which  three 
female  figures  are  ministering  to  a  man  who  sits  fest  bound 
at  the  root  of  a  tree.  Sensuality  is  soothing  him,  Evil 
Habit  is  nailing  him  to  a  branch,  and  Repugnance  at  the 
same  instant  of  time  is  applying  a  snake  to  his  side.  In 
his  face  is  feeble  delight,  the  recollection  of  past  rather 


342  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

than  perception  of  present  pleasures,  languid  enjoyment 
of  evil  with  utter  imbecility  to  good,  a  Sybaritic  effemi- 
nacy, a  submission  to  bondage,  the  springs  of  the  will 
gone  down  like  a  broken  clock,  the  sin  and  the  suffering 
CO -instantaneous,  or  the  latter  forerunning  the  former, 
remorse  jireceding  action — all  this  represented  in  one 
point  of  time. — When  I  saw  this,  I  admired  the  wonder- 
fid  skill  of  the  painter.  But  when  I  went  away,  I  wept, 
because  I  thought  of  my  own  condition. 

Of  that  there  is  no  hope  that  it  should  ever  change. 
The  waters  have  gone  over  me.  But  out  of  the  black 
depths,  coidd  I  be  heard,  I  would  cry  out  to  all  those 
who  have  but  set  a  foot  in  the  perilous  flood.  Could  the 
youth,  to  whom  the  flavour  of  his  first  wine  is  delicious 
as  the  oi)ening  scenes  of  life  or  the  entering  upon  some 
newly-discovered  paradise,  look  into  my  desolation,  and 
be  made  to  understand  what  a  dreary  thing  it  is  when  a 
man  shall  feel  himself  going  down  a  precipice  with  open 
eyes  and  a  passive  will, — to  see  his  destraction  and  have 
no  power  to  stop  it,  and  yet  to  feel  it  all  the  way  ema- 
nating from  himself;  to  perceive  all  goodness  emptied  out 
of  him,  and  yet  not  to  be  able  to  forget  a  time  when  it 
was  otherwise ;  to  bear  about  the  piteous  spectacle  of  his 
own  self-ruins  : — coidd  he  see  my  fevered  eye,  feverish 
with  last  night's  drinking,  and  feverishly  looking  for  this 
night's  repetition  of  the  folly  ;  could  he  feel  the  body  of 
the  death  out  of  which  I  cry  hourly  with  feebler  and 
feebler  outciy  to  be  delivered, — it  were  enough  to  make 
him  da,s]i  the  sparkling  beverage  to  the  earth  in  all  the 
pride  of  its  mantling  temptation ;  to  make  him  clasp  his 
teeth, 

ami  not  undo  'em 
To  suffer  wet  damnation  to  run  tliro'  'em. 

Yea,  but  (mcthinks  I  hear  somebody  object)  if  sobriety 
be  that  fine  thing  you  would  have  us  to  understand,  if 
the  comforts  of  a  cool  brain  are  to  be  preferred  to  that 
state  of  lieated  excitement  which  you  describe  and  dei)lore, 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNIvARD.  343 

what  hinders  in  yoiu*  instance  that  you  do  not  return  to 
those  liabits  from  Avhich  you  would  induce  others  never 
to  sAverve  1  if  the  blessing  be  worth  preserving,  is  it  not 
worth  recovering  1 

Eecovei'ing  ! — 0  if  a  wish  could  transport  me  back  to 
those  days  of  youth,  when  a  cbaught  from  the  next  clear 
spring  could  slake  any  heats  which  smnmer  suns  and 
youthfid  exercise  had  power  to  stir  up  in  the  blood,  how 
gladly  would  I  return  to  thee,  pure  element,  the  drink  of 
children  and  of  child-like  holy  hermit !  In  my  dreams  I 
can  sometimes  fancy  thy  cool  refreshment  purling  over  my 
burning  tongue.  But  my  waking  stomach  rejects  it.  That 
which  refreshes  innocence  only  makes  me  sick  and  faint. 

But  is  there  no  middle  way  betwixt  total  abstinence 
and  the  excess  which  kilLs  you  ? — For  yom*  sake,  reader, 
and  that  you  may  never  attain  to  my  exi:)erience,  with 
pain  I  must  utter  the  cb'eadful  tnith,  that  there  is  none, 
none  that  I  can  find.  In  my  stage  of  habit  (I  speak  not 
of  habits  less  confirmed — for  some  of  them  I  believe  the 
advice  to  be  most  prudential),  in  the  stage  which  I  have 
reached,  to  stoj)  short  of  that  measm'e  which  is  sufficient 
to  draw  on  torpor  and  sleej),  the  benumbing  apoplectic 
sleep  of  the  dnmkard,  is  to  have  taken  none  at  all.  The 
pain  of  the  self-denial  is  all  one.  And  what  that  is,  I  had 
rather  the  reader  should  believe  on  my  credit,  than  know 
from  his  own  trial.  He  wll  come  to  know  it,  whenever 
he  shall  arrive  in  that  state  in  which,  paradoxical  as  it 
may  ap2)ear,  reason  shall  only  visit  him  through  intoxica- 
tion ;  for  it  is  a  fearful  truth,  that  the  intellectual  facul- 
ties by  repeated  acts  of  intemperance  may  l^e  driven  from 
their  orderly  sphere  of  action,  theu"  clear  daylight  niinis- 
teries,  until  they  shall  be  brought  at  last  to  depend,  for 
the  faint  manifestation  of  their  departing  energies,  upon 
the  returning  periods  of  the  fiital  madness  to  which  they 
owe  their  devastation.  The  drinking  man  is  never  less 
himself  than  during  his  sober  intervals.  Evil  is  so  fiir 
his  good.^ 

1  Wheu  jioor  M painted  his  last  picture,  with  a  pencil  in 


344  THE  ESSAYS  OF  EIJA. 

Behold  me  then,  in  the  robust  period  of  life,  reduced 
to  imbecility  aud  decay.  Hear  me  couut  my  gains,  and 
the  i^rofits  which  I  have  derived  from  the  midnight  cup. 

Twelve  years  ago,  I  was  possessed  of  a  healthy  frame 
of  min<l  and  body.  I  was  never  strong,  but  I  think  my 
constitution  (for  a  weak  one)  was  as  happily  exempt  from 
the  tendency  to  any  malady  as  it  was  possible  to  be.  I 
scarce  knew  what  it  was  to  ail  anything.  Now,  except 
when  I  am  losing  myself  in  a  sea  of  di'ink,  I  anr  never 
free  from  those  uneasy  sensations  in  head  and  stomach, 
which  are  so  much  worse  to  bear  thau  any  definite  pains 
or  aches. 

At  that  time  I  was  seldom  in  bed  after  six  iu  the 
morning,  summer  and  winter.  I  awoke  refreshed,  and 
seldom  without  some  merry  thoughts  in  my  head,  or  some 
piece  of  a  song  to  welcome  the  new-born  day.  Now,  the 
fij'st  feeling  which  besets  me,  after  stretching  out  the 
hours  of  recumbence  to  their  last  possible  extent,  is  a 
forecast  of  the  wearisome  day  that  lies  before  me,  with  a 
secret  wish  that  I  could  have  lain  on  still,  or  never 
awaked. 

Life  itself,  my  waking  life,  has  much  of  the  confusion, 
the  trouble,  and  obscure  perplexity,  of  an  ill  dream.  In 
the  day-time  I  stumble  upon  dark  mountains. 

Business,  which,  though  never  very  particularly  adapted 
to  my  nature,  yet  as  something  of  necessity  to  be  gone 
through,  and  therefore  best  midertaken  with  cheerfulness, 
I  used  to  enter  upon  with  some  degree  of  alacrity,  now 
wearies,  affrights,  perplexes  me.  I  fancy  all  sorts  of  dis- 
couragements, and  am  ready  to  give  up  an  occupation 
which  gives  me  bread,  from  a  harassing  conceit  of  inca- 
pacity. The  slightest  conunission  given  me  by  a  friend, 
or  any  small  duty  which  I  have  to  perform  for  myself,  as 

one  trembling  hand,  and  a  glass  of  brandy  and  water  in  the  other, 
his  fingers  owed  the  comparative  steadiness  with  which  they  were 
enabled  to  go  throngh  their  task  in  an  imperfect  manner,  to  a 
temporary  tirmness  derived  from  a  repetition  of  practices,  the 
general  eU'ect  of  which  had  shaken  both  them  and  him  so  terribly. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  345 

gi\dng  orders  to  a  tradesman,  etc.,  haunts  me  as  a  labour 
impossible  to  be  got  through.  So  much  the  springs  of 
action  are  broken. 

The  same  cowardice  attends  me  in  all  my  intercourse 
■vrith  mankind.  I  dare  not  jiromise  that  a  friend's  hon- 
our, or  his  cause,  would  be  safe  in  my  keeping,  if  I  were 
put  to  the  expense  of  any  manly  resolution  in  defending 
it.  So  much  the  springs  of  moral  action  are  deadened 
within  me. 

My  favourite  occupations  in  times  past  now  cease  to 
entertain.  I  can  do  notlung  readily.  Application  for 
ever  so  short  a  tune  kills  me.  This  poor  abstract  of  my 
condition  was  penned  at  long  intervals,  with  scarcely  an 
attemjjt  at  connexion  of  thought,  Avhich  is  now  difiicult 
to  me. 

The  noble  passages  which  formerly  delighted  me  in 
history  or  poetic  fiction  now  only  draw  a  few  tears,  allied 
to  dotage.  My  broken  and  dispirited  nature  seems  to 
sink  before  anything  great  and  admirable. 

I  perpetually  catch  myself  in  tears,  for  any  cause,  or 
none.  It  is  inexpressible  how  much  this  infirmity  adds 
to  a  sense  of  shame,  and  a  general  feeling  of  deterioration. 

These  are  some  of  the  instances,  concerning  which  I 
can  say  "wdth  truth,  that  it  was  not  always  so  %vith  me. 

Shall  I  lift  up  the  veil  of  my  weakness  any  further  ? 
— or  is  this  disclosure  suflicient  1 

I  am  a  poor  nameless  egotist,  who  have  no  vanity  to 
consult  by  these  Confessions.  I  kuow  not  whether  I  shall 
be  laughed  at,  or  heard  seriously.  Such  as  they  are,  I 
commend  them  to  the  reader's  attention,  if  he  find  his 
own  case  any  way  touched.  I  have  told  him  what  I  am 
come  to.     Let  him  stop  in  time. 


346  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

I.— THAT  A  BULLY  LS  ALWAYS  A  COWARD. 

This  axiom  contains  a  principle  of  comj^ensation,  which 
disposes  us  to  admit  the  truth  of  it.  But  there  is  no 
safe  trusting  to  dictionaries  and  definitions.  We  should 
more  willingly  fall  in  with  this  pojiular  language,  if  wc 
did  not  find  brutality  sometimes  awkwardly  coupled  with 
valour  in  the  same  vocabidary.  The  comic  writers,  with 
their  poetical  justice,  have  contributed  not  a  little  to 
mislead  us  upon  this  point.  To  sec  a  hectoring  fellow 
exposed  and  beaten  upon  the  stage,  has  something  in  it 
wonderfidly  diverting.  Some  people's  share  of  animal 
spirits  is  notoriously  low  and  defective.  It  has  not 
strength  to  raise  a  vapour,  or  furnish  out  the  wind  of  a 
t(3lerable  bluster.  These  love  to  be  told  that  huffing  is 
no  part  of  valour.  The  truest  courage  with  them  is  that 
wluch  is  the  least  noisy  and  obtrusive.  But  confront 
one  of  these  silent  heroes  with  the  swaggerer  of  real  life, 
and  his  confidence  in  the  theory  quickly  vanishes.  Pre- 
tensions do  not  imiformly  bespeak  non-performance.  A 
modest,  inoffensive  de|)ortment  does  not  necessardy  imply 
valour ;  neither  docs  the  absence  of  it  jitstify  us  in  deny- 
ing that  quality.  Hickman  wanted  modesty — we  do 
not  mean  him  of  Clarissa — l>ut  who  ever  doubted  his 
courage'?  Even  the  poets  —  upon  whom  this  equitable 
distribution  of  qualities  should  be  most  binding — have 
thought  it  agreeable  to  nature  to  depart  from  the  rule 
upon  occasion.  Harapha,  in  the  "Agonistes,"  is  indeed 
a  bully  upon  the  received  notions.  Milton  has  made  him 
at  once  a  blusterer,  a  giant,  and  a  dastard.  But  AJmanzor, 
in  Dryden,  talks  of  driving  armies  singly  before  him — and 
does  it.  Tom  Brown  had  a  shrewder  insight  into  this 
kind  of  character  than  either  of  his  predecessors.  He 
divides  the  ]>altn  more  equably,  and  allows  his  hero  a  sort 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  347 

of  dimidiate  pre-eminence  : — "  Bully  Dawson  kicked  by 
half  the  town,  and  half  the  town  kicked  by  Bully  Dawson." 
This  was  true  distributive  justice. 


II. — THAT  ILL-GOTTEN  GAIN  NEVER  PROSPERS. 

The  weakest  part  of  mankind  have  this  saying  commonest 
in  their  mouth.  It  is  the  trite  consolation  administered 
to  the  easy  dupe,  when  he  has  been  tricked  out  of  his 
money  or  estate,  that  the  acquisition  of  it  will  do  the 
owner  no  good.  But  the  rogues  of  this  world — the 
prudenter  part  of  them  at  least, — know  better ;  and  if 
the  observation  had  been  as  true  as  it  is  old,  woidd  not 
have  Mled  by  this  time  to  have  discovered  it.  They 
have  pretty  sharp  distinctions  of  the  fluctuating  and  the 
permanent.  "Lightly  come,  lightly  go,"  is  a  proverb 
which  they  c.an  very  well  aftbrd  to  leave,  when  they  leave 
little  else,  to  the  losers.  They  do  not  always  find  manors, 
got  by  rapine  or  chicanery,  insensibly  to  melt  away  as 
the  poets  will  have  it ;  or  that  all  gold  glides,  like  thaw- 
ing snow,  from  the  thief's  hand  that  grasps  it.  Church 
land,  alienated  to  lay  uses,  was  formerly  denounced  to 
have  this  slippery  quality.  But  some  portions  of  it 
somehow  always  stuck  so  fast,  that  the  denunciators 
have  been  fain  to  postpone  the  prophecy  of  refundment 
to  a  late  posterity. 


III. THAT  A  MAN  MUST  NOT  LAUGH  AT  HIS  OWN  .TEST. 

The  severest  exaction  siu-ely  ever  invented  upon  the  self- 
denial  of  poor  human  nature  !  This  is  to  expect  a  gentle- 
man to  give  a  treat  without  partaking  of  it;  to  sit 
esurient  at  his  own  table,  aud  commend  the  flavour  of 
his  venison  upon  the  absurd  strength  of  his  never  touch- 
ing it  himself.  On  the  contrary,  we  love  to  see  a  wag 
taste  his  own  joke  to  his  party ;  to  watch  a  quirk  or  a 
merry  conceit  flickering  upon  the  lips  some  seconds  before 


348  TTIE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

the  tongiie  is  delivered  of  it.  If  it  be  good,  fresh,  and 
racy — begotten  of  the  occasion  ;  if  he  that  utters  it  never 
thought  it  before,  he  is  natm-ally  the  first  to  be  tickled 
Avith  it,  and  any  suppression  of  such  complacence  we  hold 
to  be  churlish  and  insulting.  What  does  it  seem  to  imply 
but  that  your  company  is  weak  or  foolish  to  be  moved 
by  an  image  or  a  fancy,  that  shall  stir  you  not  at  all,  or 
but  faintly'?  This  is  exactly  the  hmnour  of  the  fine 
gentleman  in  Mandeville,  who,  while  he  dazzles  his  guests 
with  the  display  of  some  costly  toy,  aft'ects  himself  to  "  see 
nothing  considerable  in  it." 


jV. — THAT  SUCH  A  ONE  SHOWS  HIS  BREEDING. — THAT 
IT  IS  EASY  TO  PERCEIVE  HE  IS  NO  GENTLEMAN. 

A  SPEECH  from  the  poorest  sort  of  people,  which  always 
indicates  that  the  party  \dtuperated  is  a  gentleman.  The 
very  fact  which  they  deny,  is  that  which  galls  and  exas- 
perates them  to  use  this  language.  The  forbearance  with 
which  it  is  usually  received  is  a  proof  what  interpretation 
the  bystander  sets  upon  it.  Of  a  kin  to  this,  and  still 
less  politic,  are  the  phrases  with  which,  in  their  street 
rhetoric,  they  ply  one  another  more  grossly; — He  is  a 

poor  creature. — He  has  not  a  rag  to  cover etc.; 

though  this  last,  we  confess,  is  more  frequently  applied 
by  females  to  females.  They  do  not  perceive  that  the 
satire  glances  upon  themselves.  A  poor  man,  of  all  things 
in  the  Avorld,  shoidd  not  upbraid  an  antagonist  with 
poverty.     Are  there  no  other  topics — as,  to  tell  him  his 

father  was  hanged — his  sister,  etc. without  exposing 

a  secret  which  should  be  kept  snug  between  them ;  and 
doing  an  affront  to  the  order  to  which  they  have  the 
honoiu-  equally  to  belong  1  All  this  while  they  do  not 
see  how  the  wealthier  man  stands  by  and  laughs  in  his 
sleeve  at  both. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  349 


V. THAT  THE  POOK  COPY  THE  VICES  OF  THE  RICH, 

A  SMOOTH  text  to  the  latter ;  and,  preached  from  the 
pulpit,  is  sure  of  a  docUe  audience  from  the  pews  lined 
with  satin.  It  is  twice  sitting  upon  velvet  to  a  foolish 
sqiiii'e  to  be  told  that  he — and  not  j^ei-verse  nature,  as  the 
homUies  would  make  us  imagine,  is  the  true  cause  of  all 
the  irregularities  in  his  parish.  This  is  striking  at  the 
root  of  free-will  indeed,  and  denjiug  the  originality  of  sin 
in  any  sense.  But  men  are  not  such  imj^licit  sheep  as 
this  comes  to.  If  the  abstinence  from  evil  on  the  part  of 
the  upper  classes  is  to  derive  itself  from  no  higher  prin- 
ciple than  the  apprehension  of  setting  ill  patterns  to  the 
lower,  we  beg  leave  to  discharge  them  from  all  S(|ueamish- 
ness  on  that  score  :  they  may  even  take  their  fill  of 
pleasm-es,  where  they  can  find  them.  The  Genius  of 
Poverty,  hampered  and  straitened  as  it  is,  is  not  so 
barren  of  invention  but  it  can  trade  upon  the  staple  of  its 
own  vice,  without  drawing  upon  their  capital.  The  poor 
are  not  quite  such  ser\ale  imitators  as  they  take  them  for. 
Some  of  them  are  veiy  clever  artists  in  their  way.  Here 
and  there,  we  find  an  original.  Who  taught  the  poor  to 
steal — to  pilfer?  They  did  not  go  to  the  great  for  school- 
masters in  these  faculties,  sm-ely.  It  is  weU  if  in  some 
vices  they  allow  us  to  be — no  copyists.  In  no  other 
sense  is  it  true  that  the  poor  copy  them,  than  as  servants 
may  be  said  to  talce  after  their  masters  and  mistresses, 
when  they  succeed  to  their  reversionary  cold  meats.  If 
the  master,  from  indisposition,  or  some  other  cause, 
neglect  his  food,  the  servant  dines  notwithstanding. 

"  0,  but  (some  will  say)  the  force  of  example  is  great." 
We  knew  a  lady  who  was  so  scnipulous  on  this  head,  that 
she  would  put  up  ■udth  the  calls  of  the  most  impertinent 
visitor,  rather  than  let  her  servant  say  she  was  not  at 
home,  for  fear  of  teaching  her  maid  to  tell  an  untruth ; 
and  this  in  the  very  fxce  of  the  fact,  which  she  knew  well 
enough,  that  the  wench  was  one  of  the  greatest  liars  upon 


350  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

the  earth  without  teaching ;  so  much  so,  that  her  mistress 
possibly  never  heard  two  words  of  consecutive  truth  from 
her  in  her  life.  But  nature  must  go  for  notliing ;  ex- 
ample must  be  everything.  This  liar  in  grain,  who  never 
opened  her  mouth  without  a  lie,  must  be  guarded  against 
a  remote  inference,  which  she  (pretty  casuist !)  might 
possibly  draw  from  a  form  of  words — literally  false,  but 
essentially  deceiving  no  one — that  under  some  circum- 
stances a  fib  might  not  be  so  exceedingly  sinful — a  fiction, 
too,  not  at  all  in  her  own  way,  or  one  that  she  coidd  be 
suspected  of  adopting,  for  few  servant-wenches  care  to  be 
denied  to  visitors. 

This  word  example  reminds  us  of  another  fine  word 
which  is  in  use  upon  these  occasions — encouragement. 
"  People  in  our  sphere  must  not  be  thought  to  give  en- 
couragement to  such  proceedings,"  To  such  a  frantic 
height  is  tliis  principle  capable  of  being  carried,  that  we 
have  known  individuals  who  have  thought  it  within  the 
scope  of  their  influence  to  sanction  despair,  and  give  eclat 
to — suicide.  A  domestic  in  the  family  of  a  county  mem- 
ber lately  deceased,  from  love,  or  some  unknown  cause, 
cut  his  throat,  but  not  successfully.  The  poor  fellow  was 
otherwise  much  loved  and  respected ;  and  great  interest 
was  used  in  his  behalf,  upon  his  recovery,  that  he  might 
be  permitted  to  retain  his  place ;  his  word  being  first 
pledged,  not  without  some  substantial  sponsors  to  promise 
for  him,  that  the  like  shoidd  never  happen  again.  His 
master  was  inclinable  to  keep  him,  but  his  mistress 
thought  otherwise ;  and  John  in  the  end  was  dismissed, 
her  ladyship  declaring  that  she  "  could  not  think  of  en- 
couraging any  such  doings  in  the  county." 

VI. — THAT  ENOUGH  IS  AS  GOOD  AS  A  FEAST. 

Not  a  man,  woman,  or  child,  in  ten  miles  round  Guild- 
hall, who  really  believes  this  saying.  The  inventor  of  it 
did  not  believe  it  himself.  It  was  made  in  revenge  by 
somebody,  who  was  disappointed  of  a  regale.     It  is  a 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  351 

vile  cold-scrag-of-mvitton  sophisiu  ;  a  lie  palmcil  upou  the 
palate,  which  knows  better  things.  If  notliing  else 
could  be  said  for  a  feast,  this  is  sufficient — that  from  the 
superfliix  there  is  usually  something  left  for  the  next 
day.  Morally  interpreted,  it  belongs  to  a  class  of  pro- 
verbs which  have  a  tendency  to  make  us  undervalue 
money.  Of  this  cast  are  those  notable  observations,  that 
money  is  not  health  ;  riches  cannot  purchase  everything  : 
the  metaphor  which  makes  gold  to  be  mere  muck,  with 
the  morality  which  traces  fine  clothing  to  the  sheep's 
back,  and  denoimces  pearl  as  the  unhandsome  excretion 
of  an  oyster.  Hence,  too,  the  phrase  which  imputes  dirt 
to  acres — a  sophistry  so  barefaced,  that  even  the  literal 
sense  of  it  is  tme  only  in  a  wet  season.  This,  and  abun- 
dance of  similar  sage  saws  assuming  to  incidcate  content, 
we  verily  believe  to  have  been  the  invention  of  some 
cunning  borrower,  who  had  designs  upon  the  purse  of 
his  wealthier  neighbour,  which  he  could  only  hope  to 
carry  by  force  of  these  verbal  jugglings.  Translate  any 
one  of  these  sayings  out  of  the  artful  metonymy  which 
envelopes  it,  and  the  trick  is  apparent.  Goodly  legs  and 
shoulders  of  mutton,  exhilarating  cordials,  books,  pictures, 
the  opportunities  of  seeing  foreign  countries,  independ- 
ence, heart's  ease,  a  man's  own  time  to  himself,  are  not 
nmck — however  we  may  be  pleased  to  scandalise  with  that 
appellation  the  faithful  metal  that  provides  them  for  us. 

VII. OF  TWO  DISPUTANTS,  THE  WARMEST  IS  GENERALLY 

IN  THE  WEONG. 

Our  experience  would  lead  us  to  quite  an  opposite  con- 
clusion. Temper,  indeed,  is  no  test  of  trath  ;  but  warmth 
and  earnestness  are  a  proof  at  least  of  a  man's  own  con- 
viction of  the  rectitude  of  that  which  he  maintains. 
Coolness  is  as  often  the  result  of  an  miprincipled  indiffer- 
ence to  truth  or  falsehood,  as  of  a  sober  confidence  in  a 
man's  own  side  in  a  dispute.  Nothing  is  more  insulting 
sometimes  than  the  appearance  of  this  philosophic  tern- 


352  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

per.  There  is  little  Titubus,  the  stammering  law- 
stationer  in  Lincoln's  Inn — we  have  seldom  known  this 
shrewd  little  fellow  engaged  in  an  argimient  where  we 
were  not  convinced  he  had  the  best  of  it,  if  his  tongue 
would  but  fairly  have  seconded  him.  When  he  has  been 
spluttering  excellent  broken  sense  for  an  hour  together, 
writhing  and  laboming  to  be  delivered  of  the  point  of 
dispute — the  very  gist  of  the  controversy  knocking  at 
his  teeth,  which  like  some  obstinate  iron-gi-ating  still 
obstructed  its  deliverance  —  his  puny  frame  convidsed, 
and  ftxce  reddening  all  over  at  an  unfairness  in  the 
logic  which  he  wanted  articidation  to  expose,  it  has 
moved  cm-  gall  to  see  a  smooth  portly  fellow  of  an 
adversary,  that  cared  not  a  button  for  the  merits  of 
the  question,  by  merely  laying  his  hand  upon  the  head 
of  the  stationer,  and  desiring  him  to  be  calm  (your 
tall  disputants  have  always  the  advantage),  with  a 
provoking  sneer  cany  the  argimient  clean  from  him  in 
the  opinion  of  all  the  bystanders,  who  have  gone  away 
clearly  convinced  that  Titubus  must  have  been  in   the 

wrong,  because  he  was  in  a  passion ;  and  that  Mr.  , 

meaning  his  opponent,  is  one  of  the  fairest  and  at  the  same 
time  one  of  the  most  dispassionate  arguers  breathing. 

VIII. — THAT  VERBAL  ALLUSIONS  ARE   NOT  WIT,  BECAUSE 
THEY  WILL  NOT  BEAR  A  TRANSLATION. 

The  same  mighf  be  said  of  the  wittiest  local  allusions. 
A  custom  is  sometimes  as  difficult  to  explain  to  a  foreigner 
as  a  pun.  What  would  become  of  a  great  part  of  the 
wit  of  the  last  age,  if  it  were  tried  by  this  test  %  How 
would  certain  topics,  as  aldermanity,  cuckoldry,  liave 
sounded  to  a  Terentian  auditory,  though  Terence  himself 
had  lieen  alive  to  translate  them  1  Senatoi'  ^irhamis  with 
Cnrrma  to  boot  for  a  synonym,  woidd  Init  faintly  have 
done  the  business.  Words,  involving  notions,  are  hard 
enough  to  render ;  it  is  too  much  to  expect  us  to  trans- 
late a  sound,  and  give  an  elegant  version  to  a  jingle. 


POrULAR  FALLACIES.  353 

The  Virgilian  harmony  is  not  translatable,  but  by  sub- 
stituting harmonious  soimds  in  another  language  for  it. 
To  Latinise  a  pim,  we  must  seek  a  pim  in  Latin  that  will 
answer  to  it ;  as,  to  give  an  idea  of  the  double  entlings 
in  Hudibras,  we  must  have  recourse  to  a  similar  practice 
in  old  monkish  doggrel.  Dennis,  the  fiercest  oppugner 
of  puns  in  ancient  or  modern  times,  professes  hunself 
highly  tickled  with  the  "  a  stick,"  chiming  to  "  eccle- 
siastic." Yet  what  is  this  but  a  species  of  pim,  a  verbal 
consonance  ? 


IX. — THAT  THE  "WORST  PUNS  ARE  THE  BEST. 

If  by  worst  be  only  meant  the  most  far-fetched  and 
startling,  we  agree  to  it.  A  pun  is  not  bound  by  the 
laws  which  limit  nicer  wit.  It  is  a  pistol  let  off  at  the 
ear  ;  not  a  feather  to  tickle  the  intellect.  It  is  an  antic 
which  does  not  stand  upon  manners,  but  comes  bountling 
into  the  presence,  and  does  not  show  the  less  comic  for 
being  dragged  in  sometimes  by  the  head  and  shoulders. 
What  though  it  limp  a  little,  or  prove  defective  in  one 
leg  1 — all  the  better.  A  pun  may  easily  be  too  cmious 
and  artificial.  Who  has  not  at  one  time  or  other  been 
at  a  party  of  professors  (himself  perhaps  an  old  ofiender 
in  that  line),  where,  after  ringing  a  roimd  of  the  most  in- 
genious conceits,  every  man  contributing  his  shot,  and 
some  there  the  most  expert  shooters  of  the  day ;  after 
making  a  poor  ^vord  nm  the  gauntlet  till  it  is  ready  to 
drop ;  after  hunting  and  winding  it  through  aU  the 
possible  ambages  of  similar  soimds ;  after  squeezing,  and 
haidiug,  and  tugging  at  it,  till  the  very  milk  of  it  wiE 
not  yield  a  drop  further, — suddenly  some  obscure,  un- 
thought-of  fellow  in  a  corner,  who  was  never  'prentice  to 
the  trade,  whom  the  company  for  very  pity  passed  over, 
as  we  do  by  a  known  poor  man  when  a  money-subscrip- 
tion is  going  round,  no  one  calling  upon  him  for  his 
quota — has  all  at  once  come  out  with  something  so 
whimsical,  yet  so  pertinent ;  so  brazen  in  its  pretensions, 
2  A 


354  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

yet  so  impossible  to  be  denied ;  so  exquisitely  good,  and 
so  deplorably  bad,  at  the  same  time, — that  it  has  proved  a 
Robin  Hood's  shot ;  anything  ulterior  to  that  is  despaired 
of;  and  the  party  breaks  uj),  luianimously  voting  it  to  be 
the  very  worst  (that  is,  best)  pun  of  the  evening.  This 
species  of  wit  is  the  better  for  not  being  perfect  in  all  its 
parts.  What  it  gains  in  completeness,  it  loses  in  natural- 
ness. The  more  exactly  it  satisfies  the  critical,  the  less 
hold  it  has  upon  some  other  faculties.  The  puns  which 
are  most  entertaining  are  those  which  will  least  bear  an 
analysis.  Of  this  kind  is  the  following,  recorded  with  a 
sort  of  stigma,  in  one  of  Swift's  Miscellanies. 

An  Oxford  scholar,  meeting  a  porter  who  was  carrying 
a  hare  through  the  streets,  accosts  him  with  this  extra- 
ordinary question  :  "  Prithee,  friend,  is  that  thy  own  hair 
or  a  wig?" 

There  is  no  excusing  this,  and  no  resisting  it.  A  man 
might  blur  ten  sides  of  paper  in  attempting  a  defence  of 
it  against  a  critic  who  should  be  laughter -proof.  The 
quilible  in  itself  is  not  considerable.  It  is  only  a  new 
tiu'n  given  by  a  little  false  pronunciation  to  a  very  com- 
mon though  not  very  courteous  inquiry.  Put  by  one 
gentleman  to  another  at  a  dinner-party,  it  would  have 
been  vapid ;  to  the  mistress  of  the  house,  it  would  have 
shown  much  less  Avit  than  rudeness.  We  must  take  in 
the  totality  of  time,  place,  and  person ;  the  pert  look  of 
the  inquiring  scholar,  the  desponding  looks  of  the  puzzled 
porter :  the  one  stopping  at  leisure,  the  other  hunying 
on  with  his  burden ;  the  innocent  though  rather  abrupt 
tendency  of  the  first  member  of  the  question,  with  the 
utter  and  inextricable  irrelevancy  of  the  second  ;  the 
place — a  public  street,  not  favourable  to  frivolous  investi- 
gations ;  the  affrontive  quality  of  the  primitive  inquiry 
(the  common  question)  invidiously  transferred  to  the 
derivative  (the  new  turn  given  to  it)  in  the  implied 
satire ;  namely,  that  few  of  that  tribe  are  expected  to 
eat  of  the  good  things  which  they  carry,  they  being  in 
most  countries  considered  rather  as  the  temporary  trustees 


POPUIiAR  FALLACIES.  355 

than  owners  of  such  dainties, — which  the  fellow  was 
beginning  to  understand ;  but  then  the  wig  again  comes 
in,  and  he  can  make  nothing  of  it ;  all  put  together  con- 
stitute a  i^ieture :  Hogarth  could  have  made  it  intel- 
ligible on  canvas. 

Yet  nine  out  of  ten  critics  will  pronounce  this  a  very 
bad  pun,  because  of  the  defectiveness  in  the  concluding 
member,  Avhich  is  its  veiy  beauty,  and  constitutes  the 
surprise.  The  same  person  shall  cry  up  for  admirable 
the  cold  quibble  from  Virgil  about  the  broken  Cremona;^ 
because  it  is  made  out  in  all  its  parts,  and  leaves  nothing 
to  the  imagination.  We  venture  to  call  it  cold  ;  be- 
cause, of  thousands  who  have  admired  it,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  one  who  has  heartily  chuckled  at  it.  As 
appealing  to  the  judgment  merely  (setting  the  risible 
faculty  aside),  we  must  pronounce  it  a  monument  of 
curious  felicity.  But  as  some  stories  are  said  to  be  too 
good  to  be  true,  it  may  with  equal  truth  be  asserted  of 
this  biverbal  allusion,  that  it  is  too  good  to  be  natural. 
One  cannot  help  suspecting  that  the  incident  was  in- 
vented to  fit  the  line.  It  woidd  have  been  better  had  it 
been  less  perfect.  Like  some  Virgilian  hemistichs,  it 
has  suffered  by  filling  up.  The  nimium  Vicina  was 
enough  in  conscience ;  the  Cremonce  afterwards  loads  it. 
It  is,  in  fact,  a  double  pun;  and  we  have  always  ob- 
served that  a  superfoetation  in  this  sort  of  wit  is  dangerous. 
When  a  man  has  said  a  good  thing,  it  is  seldom  pohtic 
to  foUow  it  up.  We  do  not  care  to  be  cheated  a  second 
time ;  or,  perhaps  the  mind  of  man  (with  reverence  be  it 
spoken)  is  not  capacious  enough  to  lodge  two  puns  at  a 
time.  The  impression,  to  be  forcible,  must  be  simul- 
taneous and  undivided. 

X. THAT  HANDSOME  IS  THAT  HANDSOME  DOES. 

Those  who  use  this  proverb  can  never  have  seen  Mrs. 
Conrady. 

1  Swift. 


356  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

The  soil],  if  we  may  believe  Plotiuus,  is  a  ray  from  the 
celestial  beauty.  As  she  partakes  more  or  less  of  this 
lieavenly  light,  slie  informs,  with  corresponding  char- 
acters, the  fleshly  tenement  which  she  chooses,  and  frames 
to  herself  a  suitable  mansion. 

AU  wliich  only  proves  that  the  soul  of  Mrs.  Conrady, 
in  her  pre-existent  state,  was  no  great  judge  of  arclii- 
tecture. 

To  the  same  effect,  in  a  Hymn  in  lionour  of  Beauty, 
divine  Spenser  2)l(itonismg  sings  : — 

Every  spirit  as  it  is  more  pure, 


And  hatli  iu  it  tlie  more  of  lieavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  haliit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight 
With  cheerful  gi-ace  and  amiable  sight. 
For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take  : 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make. 

But  Spenser,  it  is  clear,  never  saw  Mrs.  Conrady. 

These  poets,  we  find,  are  no  safe  guides  in  philosophy  ; 
for  here,  in  his  very  next  stanza  but  one,  is  a  saving 
clause,  which  throws  us  all  out  again,  and  leaves  us  as 
much  to  seek  as  ever  : — 

Yet  oft  it  falls,  that  many  a  gentle  mind 
Dwells  in  deformed  tabernacle  drown'd, 
Either  by  chance,  against  the  course  of  kind, 
Or  through  unaptness  in  the  siibstance  found, 
Which  it  assumed  of  some  stubborn  ground. 
That  will  not  yield  unto  her  form's  direction, 
But  is  performed  with  some  foul  imperfection. 

From  Avhi(^h  it  would  follow,  that  Spenser  had  seen  some- 
body like  Mrs.  Conrady. 

The  spirit  of  this  good  lady — her  previous  anima — 
must  have  stumbled  upon  one  of  these  untoward  taber- 
nacles which  he  speaks  of.  A  more  rebellious  com- 
modity of  clay  for  a  ground,  as  the  poet  calls  it,  no 
gentle  mind — and  sure  hers  is  one  of  the  gentlest — ever 
liad  to  deal  with. 

Pondering  ui)on  her  inexplicable  visage— inexplicable, 
we  mean,  but  by  this  modification  of  the  theory — we 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  357 

have  come  to  a  couclusiou  that,  if  one  must  be  phiiii,  it 
is  better  to  be  plain  all  over,  than  amidst  a  tolerable 
residue  of  featm'es  to  hang  out  one  that  shall  be  excep- 
tionable. No  one  can  say  of  Mrs.  Conrady's  coimtenance 
that  it  woidd  be  better  if  she  had  but  a  nose.  It  is  im- 
jiossible  to  pidl  her  to  jjieces  in  this  manner.  AVe  have 
seen  the  most  malicious  beauties  of  her  own  sex  baffled 
in  the  attempt  at  a  selection.  The  tout-ensemhle  defies 
particularizing.  It  is  too  complete — too  consistent,  as 
we  may  say — to  admit  of  these  invidious  reservations. 
It  is  not  as  if  some  Apelles  had  picked  out  here  a  lip — 
and  there  a  chin — out  of  the  collected  iigliness  of  Greece, 
to  frame  a  model  by.  It  is  a  s}anmetrical  whole.  We 
challenge  the  minutest  conuoissem-  to  cavil  at  any  part  or 
parcel  of  the  countenance  in  question ;  to  say  that  this, 
or  that,  is  improperly  placed.  We  are  convinced  that 
true  ugliness,  no  less  than  is  affirmed  of  tnie  beauty,  is 
the  residt  of  harmony.  Like  that,  too,  it  reigns  without 
a  competitor.  No  one  ever  saw  Mrs.  Conrady  without 
pronouncing  her  to  be  the  plainest  woman  that  he  ever 
met  with  in  the  coiu"se  of  his  life.  The  first  time  that 
you  are  indulged  \dt\\  a  sight  of  her  face,  is  an  era  in 
yoiu-  existence  ever  after.  You  are  glad  to  have  seen  it 
— like  Stoneheuge.  No  one  can  pretend  to  forget  it.  No 
one  ever  apologised  to  her  for  meeting  her  in  the  street 
on  such  a  day  and  not  knowing  her :  the  jiretext  would 
be  too  bare.  Nobody  can  mistake  her  for  another.  No- 
body can  say  of  her,  "  I  think  I  have  seen  that  face  some- 
where, but  I  cannot  call  to  mind  where."  Yoii  must 
remember  that  in  such  a  parlour  it  first  struck  you — like 
a  bust.  You  wondered  where  the  owner  of  the  house 
had  picked  it  up.  You  wondered  more  when  it  began  to 
move  its  lips — so  mildly  too  !  No  one  ever  thought  of 
asking  her  to  sit  for  her  picture.  Lockets  are  for  remem- 
brance ;  and  it  would  be  clearly  supei-fluous  to  hang  an 
image  at  your  heart,  which,  once  seen,  can  never  be  out 
of  it.  It  is  not  a  mean  face  either ;  its  entire  originality 
precludes  that.     Neither  is  it  of  that  order  of  plain  faces 


358  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

which  improve  upon  acquaiuttince.  Some  very  good  but 
ordinary  people,  by  an  miwearied  perseverance  in  good 
offices,  put  a  cheat  upon  oui-  eyes ;  juggle  our  senses  out 
of  their  natm-al  impressions  ;  and  set  us  upon  discovering 
good  indications  in  a  countenance,  which  at  first  sight 
promised  nothing  less.  We  detect  gentleness,  which  had 
escaped  us,  lurking  about  an  imder  lip.  But  when  Mrs. 
Courady  has  done  you  a  service,  her  foce  remains  the 
same ;  when  she  has  done  you  a  thousand,  and  you  know- 
that  she  is  ready  to  double  the  number,  still  it  is  that 
individual  face.  Neither  can  you  say  of  it,  that  it  woidd 
be  a  good  face  if  it  were  not  marked  by  the  small-pox — a 
compliment  which  is  always  more  admissive  than  excusa- 
tory— for  either  Mrs.  Conrady  never  had  the  small-pox ; 
or,  as  we  say,  took  it  kindly.  No,  it  stands  upon  its  own 
merits  foirly.  There  it  is.  It  is  her  mark,  her  token  ; 
that  which  she  is  known  by. 

XI. THAT  WE  MUST  NOT  LOOK  A  GIFT  HOESE  IN 

THE  MOUTH : 

Nor  a  lady's  age  in  the  parish  register.  We  hope  we 
have  more  delicacy  than  to  do  either;  but  some  faces 
spare  us  the  trouble  of  these  dented  inquiries.  And  what 
if  the  beast,  Avhich  my  friend  would  force  upon  my  ac- 
ceptance, prove,  upon  the  fiice  of  it,  a  sony  Rosinante,  a 
lean,  ill-favom-ed  jade,  whom  no  gentleman  could  think 
of  setting  up  in  his  stables  1  Must  I,  rather  than  not  be 
obliged  to  my  friend,  make  her  a  companion  to  Eclipse  or 
Lightfoot?  A  horse-giver,  no  more  than  a  horse-seller, 
has  a  right  to  palm  his  spavined  article  upon  us  for  good 
ware.  An  equivalent  is  exi:)ected  in  cither  case;  and, 
with  my  own  good-^^all,  I  coidd  no  more  be  cheated  out 
of  my  thanks  than  out  of  my  money.  Some  people  have 
a  knack  of  putting  upon  you  gifts  of  no  real  value,  to 
engage  you  to  substantial  gratitude.  We  thank  them  for 
nothing.  Our  friend  ]\Iitis  carries  this  humom*  of  never 
refusing  a  present  to  the  very  point  of  absm-dity — if  it 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  359 

Avere  possible  to  couple  the  ridiculous  with  so  much  mis- 
taken delicacy  and  real  good-nature.  Kot  an  apartment 
in  his  fine  house  (and  he  has  a  tnie  taste  in  household 
decorations),  but  is  stuffed  uj)  wdth  some  preposterous 
print  or  mirror — the  -worst  adapted  to  his  panels  that 
may  be — the  presents  of  his  friends  that  know  his  weak- 
ness ;  while  his  noble  Vandykes  are  displaced  to  make 
room  for  a  set  of  daubs,  the  work  of  some  wretched  artist 
of  his  acquaintance,  who,  having  had  them  rctm-ned  upon 
his  hands  for  bad  likenesses,  finds  his  account  in  bestow- 
ing them  here  gratis.  The  good  creature  has  not  the 
heart  to  mortify  the  painter  at  the  expense  of  an  honest 
refusal.  It  is  pleasant  (if  it  did  not  vex  one  at  the  same 
time)  to  see  him  sitting  in  his  dining  parlour,  sm-rouuded 
with  obscure  aunts  and  cousins  to  God  knows  whom, 
while  the  true  Lady  Marys  and  Lady  Bettys  of  his  own 
honourable  family,  in  favour  to  these  adopted  frights,  are 
consigned  to  the  staircase  and  the  lumber-room.  In  like 
manner,  his  goodly  shelves  are  one  by  one  stripped  of  his 
favourite  old  authors,  to  give  place  to  a  collection  of  pre- 
sentation copies — the  flour  and  bran  of  modern  poetry. 
A  presentation  copy,  reader — if  haply  you  are  yet  innocent 
of  such  favom's — is  a  copy  of  a  book  wdiich  does  not  sell, 
sent  you  by  the  author,  with  his  foolish  autograph  at  the 
beginning  of  it ;  for  which,  if  a  stranger,  he  only  demands 
your  friendship  ;  if  a  brother  author,  he  expects  from  you 
a  book  of  yom-s,  which  does  sell,  in  return.  We  can 
speak  to  experience,  ha^ang  by  us  a  tolerable  assortment 
of  these  gift-horses.  Not  to  ride  a  metaphor  to  death — 
we  are  willing  to  acknowledge  that  in  some  gifts  there  is 
sense.  A  duplicate  out  of  a  friend's  library  (where  he 
has  more  than  one  copy  of  a  rare  author)  is  intelligible. 
There  are  favom-s,  short  of  the  pecimiary — a  thing  not 
fit  to  be  hinted  at  among  gentlemen — which  confer  as 
much  grace  upon  the  acceptor  as  the  offerer ;  the  kind, 
we  confess,  which  is  most  to  our  palate,  is  of  those  little 
conciliatory  missives,  which  for  their  vehicle  generally 
choose  a  hamper — little  odd  presents  of  game,  friut,  per- 


3i)0  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

haps  wine — tlioui,^Ii  it  is  essential  to  the  delicacy  of  the 
latter,  tliat  it  be  lioine-uiade.  We  love  to  have  our  friend 
in  the  country  sitting  thus  at  our  table  by  proxy;  to 
apprehend  his  presence  (though  a  hundred  miles  may  be 
between  us)  by  a  turkey,  whose  goodly  aspect  reflects  to 
us  his  "plump  corpusculuni ;"  to  taste  him  in  grouse  or 
woodcock ;  to  feel  him  gliding  down  in  the  toast  peculiar 
to  the  latter ;  to  concorporate  him  in  a  slice  of  Canterbiu-y 
brawn.  This  is  indeed  to  have  him  within  ourselves ;  to 
know  him  intimately :  such  participation  is  methinks 
unitivc,  as  the  old  theologians  phrase  it.  For  these  con- 
siderations we  should  be  sorry  if  certain  restrictive  regula- 
tions, which  are  thought  to  bear  hard  upon  the  peasantry 
of  this  country,  were  entirely  done  away  with.  A  hare, 
as  the  law  now  stands,  makes  many  friends.  Caius  con- 
ciliates Titius  (knowing  his  </oul)  with  a  leash  of  partridges. 
Titius  (suspecting  his  partiality  for  them)  passes  them  to 
Lucius ;  who,  in  his  tiuii,  preferring  his  friend's  relish  to 
his  own,  makes  them  over  to  Marcius ;  till  in  their  ever- 
widening  progress,  and  round  of  unconscious  circum- 
migration,  they  distribute  the  seeds  of  harmony  over  half 
a  parish.  We  are  well-disposed  to  this  kind  of  sensible 
remembrances  ;  and  are  the  less  apt  to  be  taken  by  those 
little  airy  tokens — impalpable  to  the  palate — which,  under 
the  names  of  rings,  lockets,  keepsakes,  amuse  some  people's 
fancy  mightily.  We  could  never  away  with  these  indi- 
gestible trifles.  They  are  the  very  kickshaws  and  foppery 
of  friendship. 

XII. THAT  HOME  IS  HOME  TH0UC4H  IT  IS  NEVER 

SO  HOMELY. 

Homes  there  are,  we  are  sure,  that  are  no  homes  ;  the 
home  of  the  very  poor  man,  and  another  which  we  shall 
speak  to  presently.  Crowded  places  of  cheap  entertain- 
ment, and  the  benches  of  alehouses,  if  they  could  speak, 
might  bear  mournful  testimony  to  the  first.  To  them 
the  very  poor  man  resorts  for  an  image  of  the  home  which 


POPULAll  FALLACIES.  361 

he  oaoiiot  find  at  home.  For  a  starved  grate,  and  a 
scanty  fixing,  that  is  not  enough  to  keep  alive  the  natural 
heat  in  the  fingers  of  so  many  shivering  children  with 
their  mother,  he  finds  in  the  depths  of  winter  always  a 
blazing  hearth,  and  a  hob  to  warm  his  pittance  of  beer 
by.  Instead  of  the  clamours  of  a  wife,  made  gaunt  by 
famishing,  he  meets  with  a  cheerful  attendance  beyond 
the  merits  of  the  trifle  which  he  can  aflbrd  to  spend. 
He  has  companions  which  his  home  denies  him,  for  the 
very  poor  man  has  no  visitors.  He  can  look  into  the 
goings  on  of  the  world,  and  speak  a  little  to  politics.  At 
home  there  are  no  politics  stirring,  but  the  domestic.  All 
interests,  real  or  imaginary,  all  toims  that  shoidd  expand 
the  mind  of  man,  and  connect  him  to  a  sjTiipathy  with 
general  existence,  are  crushed  in  the  absorbing  considera- 
tion of  food  to  be  obtained  for  the  family.  Beyond  the 
price  of  brejid,  news  is  senseless  and  impertinent.  At 
home  there  is  no  larder.  Here  there  is  at  least  a  show 
(if  plenty ;  and  while  he  cooks  his  lean  scrap  of  butcher's 
meat  before  the  common  bars,  or  mmiches  his  himdjler 
cold  \dands,  his  relishing  bread  and  cheese  ^yiih  an  onion, 
in  a  comer,  where  no  one  reflects  upon  his  poverty,  he 
has  a  sight  of  the  substantial  joint  providing  for  the 
landlord  and  his  family.  He  takes  an  interest  in  the 
dressing  of  it ;  and  while  he  assists  in  removing  the  trivet 
from  the  fire,  he  feels  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  beef 
and  cabbage,  which  he  was  begianing  to  forget  at  home. 
All  this  while  he  deserts  his  wife  and  chilcken.  But 
what  wife,  and  what  children  !  Prosperous  men,  who 
object  to  this  desertion,  image  to  themselves  some  clean 
contented  family  like  that  which  they  go  home  to.  But 
look  at  the  coimtenance  of  the  poor  waves  who  foUow  and 
persecute  their  good-man  to  the  door  of  the  pubhc-house, 
which  he  is  about  to  enter,  when  something  like  shame 
would  restrain  him,  if  stronger  misery  did  not  induce  him 
to  pass  the  threshold.  That  face,  ground  by  want,  in 
which  eA^ery  cheerful,  every  conversable  hneament  has 
been  long  efiaced  by  misery,- — is  that  a  face  to  stay  at 


362  I  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

lioine  with  ?  is  it  more  a  woman,  or  a  wild  cat  1  alas  !  it 
is  the  face  6f  the  wife  of  his  youth,  that  once  smiled  upon 
him.  It  can  smile  no  longer.  What  comforts  can  it 
share  1  what  Inirthens  can  it  lighten  1  Oh,  'tis  a  fine 
thing  to  talk  of  the  humble  meal  shared  together  !  But 
what  if  there  be  no  bread  in  the  cupboard  1  The  innocent 
prattle  of  his  children  takes  out  the  sting  of  a  man's 
jwverty.  But  the  children  of  the  very  poor  do  not  jirattle. 
It  is  none  of  the  least  frightful  features  in  that  condition, 
that  there  is  no  childishness  in  its  dwellings.  Poor  people, 
said  a  sensible  old  nurse  to  us  once,  do  not  bring  u})  their 
children  ;  they  drag  them  up. 

The  little  careless  darling  of  the  wealthier  nursery,  in 
their  hovel  is  transformed  betimes  into  a  premature  re- 
flecting person.  No  one  has  time  to  dandle  it,  no  one 
thinks  it  worth  while  to  coax  it,  to  soothe  it,  to  toss  it 
up  and  down,  to  humom-  it.  There  is  none  to  kiss  away 
its  tears.  If  it  cries,  it  can  only  be  beaten.  It  has  been 
prettily  said,  that  "a  babe  is  fed  with  milk  and  praise." 
But  the  aliment  of  this  poor  babe  was  thin,,  unnourishing ; 
the  return  to  its  little  baby  tricks,  and  efforts  to  engage 
attention,  bitter  ceaseless  objurgation.  It  never  had  a 
toy,  or  knew  what  a  coral  meant.  It  grew  up  without 
the  lullaby  of  nurses,  it  was  a  stranger  to  the  patient 
fondle,  the  hushing  caress,  the  attracting  novelty,  the 
costlier  plaything,  or  the  cheaper  off-hand  contrivance  to 
divert  the  child ;  the  prattled  nonsense  (best  sense  to  it), 
the  wise  impertinences,  the  wholesome  lies,  the  apt  story 
interposed,  that  puts  a  stop  to  present  suff"erings,  and 
awakens  the  passions  of  young  wonder.  It  was  never 
sung  to — no  one  ever  told  to  it  a  tale  of  the  nursery.  It 
was  dragged  up,  to  live  or  to  die  as  it  happened.  It  had 
no  young  dreams.  It  broke  at  once  into  the  iron  realities 
of  life.  A  child  exists  not  for  the  very  jioor  as  any  ob- 
ject of  dalliance ;  it  is  only  another  mouth  to  be  fed,  a 
pair  of  little  hands  to  be  betimes  inured  to  labour.  It  is 
the  rival,  till  it  can  be  the  co-operator,  for  food  with  the 
parent.     It  is  never  his  mirth,  his  diversion,  his  solace : 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  3G3 

it  never  makes  him  yoimg  again,  with  recalling  his  yoimg 
times.  The  children  of  the  very  poor  have  no  young 
times.  It  makes  the  very  heart  to  bleed  to  overhear  the 
casual  street-talk  between  a  jioor  woman  and  her  little 
girl,  a  woman  of  the  better  sort  of  poor,  in  a  condition 
rather  above  the  squalid  beings  which  we  have  been 
contemplating.  It  is  not  of  toys,  of  nursery  books, 
of  summer  holidaj's  (fitting  that  age) ;  of  the  promised 
sight,  or  play ;  of  praised  sufficiency  at  school.  It  is  of 
maugUng  and  clear-starching,  of  the  price  of  coals,  or  of 
potatoes.  The  questions  of  the  child,  that  should  be  the 
very  outpourings  of  curiosity  in  idleness,  are  marked  with 
forecast  and  melancholy  providence.  It  has  come  to  be  a 
woman, — before  it  was  a  child.  It  has  leanied  to  go  to 
market ;  it  chafli"ers,  it  haggles,  it  en\des,  it  mm-mm-s  ;  it  is 
knowing,  acute,  shai-j^ened  ;  it  never  prattles.  Had  we  not 
reason  to  say  that  the  home  of  the  veiy  poor  is  no  home  1 
There  is  yet  another  home,  wMch  we  are  constrained 
to  deny  to  be  one.  It  has  a  larder,  which  the  home  of 
the  poor  man  wants  ;  its  fireside  conveniences,  of  which 
the  poor  tb-eam  not.  But  with  all  this,  it  is  no  liome. 
It  is — the  house  of  a  man  that  is  infested  with  many 
visitors.  May  we  be  branded  for  the  veriest  churl,  if  we 
deny  our  heart  to  the  many  noble-hearted  friends  that  at 
times  exchange  their  dwelling  for  our  poor  roof !  It  is 
not  of  guests  that  we  complain,  but  of  endless,  pm-pose- 
less  \asitants  ;  droppers-in,  as  they  are  called.  We  some- 
times wonder  from  what  sky  they  fall.  It  is  the  very 
error  of  the  position  of  oiu:  lodging  ;  its  horoscopy  was  ill 
calculated,  being  just  situate  in  a  medimn — a  plaguy 
suburban  mid-space — fitted  to  catch  idlers  from  to'mi  or 
coimtry.  We  are  older  than  we  were,  and  age  is  easily 
put  out  of  its  way.  We  have  fewer  sands  in  oiu*  glass  to 
reckon  upon,  and  we  cannot  brook  to  see  them  drop  in 
endlessly  succeeding  impertinences.  At  oiu*  time  of  life, 
to  be  alone  sometimes  is  as  needfid.  as  sleep.  It  is  the 
refreshing  sleep  of  the  day.  The  growing  infirmities  of 
age  manifest  themselves  in  nothing  more  strongly  than  in 


364  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

ail  inveterate  dislike  of  iiiterruption.  The  tliinji;  which 
we  are  doiiif,^,  we  wish  to  be  i)ennitted  to  do.  We  have 
neither  much  knowledge  nor  devices  ;  but  there  are  fewer 
in  the  place  to  which  we  hasten.  We  are  not  willingly 
put  out  of  our  way,  even  at  a  game  of  nine-pins.  While 
youth  was,  we  had  vast  reversions  in  time  future;  we 
are  reduced  to  a  present  pittance,  and  obliged  to  econo- 
mise in  that  article.  We  bleed  away  our  moments  now 
as  hardly  as  oiu-  ducats.  We  cannot  bear  to  have  our 
thin  wardrobe  eaten  and  fretted  into  by  moths.  We  are 
willing  to  barter  our  good  time  with  a  friend,  who  gives 
us  in  exchange  his  own.  Herein  is  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  genuine  guest  and  the  visitant.  This  latter 
takes  your  good  time,  and  gives  you  his  bad  in  exchange. 
The  guest  is  domestic  to  you  as  youY  good  cat,  or  house- 
hold bird ;  the  visitant  is  yoiir  fly,  that  flaps  in  at  yom 
window  and  out  again,  leaving  nothing  but  a  sense  of  dis- 
turbance, and  victuals  spoiled.  The  inferior  functions  of 
life  begin  to  move  heavily.  We  cannot  concoct  our  food 
with  interniptions.  Our  chief  meal,  to  be  nutritive,  must 
be  solitary.  With  difficulty  we  can  eat  before  a  guest ; 
and  never  understood  what  the  relish  of  public  feasting 
meant.  Meats  have  no  sapor,  nor  digestion  ftiir  play,  in 
a  crowd.  The  unexpected  coming  in  of  a  visitant  stojis 
the  machine.  There  is  a  i:)vmctual  generation  who  time 
their  calls  to  the  precise  conmiencement  of  your  dining- 
hour — not  to  eat — but  to  see  you  eat.  Our  knife  and 
fork  drop  instinctively,  and  we  feel  that  we  have  swallowed 
our  latest  morsel.  Others  again  show  their  genius,  as  we 
have  said,  in  knocking  the  moment  you  have  just  sat 
down  to  a  book.  They  have  a  peculiar  compassionate 
sneer,  with  which  they  "  hope  that  they  do  not  interrupt 
your  studies."  Though  they  flutter  oft"  the  next  moment, 
to  carry  their  imiiertinences  to  the  nearest  student  that 
they  can  call  their  friend,  the  tone  of  the  book  is  spoiled  ; 
we  shut  the  leaves,  and  with  Dante's  lovers,  read  no  more 
that  day.  It  were  well  if  the  eftect  of  intrusion  were 
sinii)ly  coextensive  with  its  presence,  but  it  mars  all  the 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  ,3G5 

good  liours  afterwards.  These  scratches  in  appearance 
leave  an  orifice  that  closes  not  hastily.  "It  is  a  prosti- 
tution of  the  bravery  of  friendship,"  says  worthy  Bishop 
Taylor,  "  to  spend  it  upon  impertinent  peoi^le,  who  are, 
it  may  be,  loads  to  their  families,  but  can  never  ease  my 
loads."  This  is  the  secret  of  their  gaddiugs,  their  visits, 
and  morning  calls.  They  too  have  homes,  which  are — 
DO  homes. 

XITI.— THAT  YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME  AND  LOVE  MY  DOG. 

"  Good  sir,  or  madam — as  it  may  be — we  most  willingly 
embrace  the  offer  of  your  friendship.  We  have  long 
known  yom'  excellent  qualities.  We  have  wished  to  have 
you  nearer  to  us ;  to  liold  you  within  the  very  innermost 
fold  of  oiu-  heart.  We  can  have  no  reserve  towards  a 
person  of  your  open  and  noble  nature.  The  frankness  of 
your  humoiu"  suits  us  exactly.  We  have  been  long  look- 
ing for  such  a  friend.  Quick — let  us  disburthen  om* 
troubles  into  each  other's  bosom — let  us  make  our  single 
joys  shine  by  reduplication. — But  yap,  yap,  yap  !  what 
is  this  confoimded  cm*?  he  has  fastened  his  tooth,  which 
is  none  of  the  bluntest,  just  in  the  fleshy  part  of  my  leg." 

"  It  is  my  dog,  sir.  You  must  love  him  for  my  sake. 
Here,  Test— Test— Test !" 

"  But  he  lias  bitten  me." 

"  Ay,  that  he  is  ajDt  to  do,  till  you  are  better  acquainted 
with  liini.    I  have  had  him  three  years.    He  never  bites  me.'' 

Yap,  yap,  yap  ! — "  He  is  at  it  again." 

"  Oil,  sir,  you  must  not  kick  him.  He  does  not  like 
to  be  kicked.  I  expect  my  dog  to  be  treated  with  aU  the 
respect  due  to  myself." 

"  But  do  you  always  take  him  out  with  you,  when  you 
go  a  friendship-hunting  V 

"  Invariably.  'Tis  the  sweetest,  prettiest,  best-condi- 
tioned animal.  I  call  him  my  test — the  touchstone  by 
which  to  try  a  friend.  No  one  can  properly  be  said  to 
love  me,  who  does  not  love  him." 


3GG  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

"  Excuse  us,  dear  sir — or  madam,  aforesaid — if  upon 
further  consideration  we  are  oblig'ed  to  decline  the  otherwise 
invaluable  offer  of  your  friendship.     We  do  not  like  dogs." 

"Mighty  well,  sir, — you  know  the  conditions — you 
may  have  worse  offers.     Come  along.  Test." 

The  above  dialogue  is  not  so  imaginary,  but  that,  in 
the  intercourse  of  life,  we  have  had  frequent  occasions  of 
l^reaking  off  an  agreeable  intimacy  by  reason  of  these 
canine  appendages.  They  do  not  always  come  in  the 
shajje  of  dogs ;  they  sometimes  wear  the  more  jjlausible 
and  human  character  of  kinsfolk,  near  acquaintances,  my 
friend's  friend,  his  jiartner,  his  wife,  or  his  children.  We 
could  never  yet  form  a  friendship — not  to  speak  of  more 
delicate  correspondence — however  much  to  our  taste, 
without  the  intervention  of  some  third  anomaly,  some 
impertinent  clog  affixed  to  the  relation — the  understood 
dog  in  the  i:)roverb.  The  good  things  of  life  are  not  to 
be  had  singly,  but  come  to  us  with  a  mixtiu-e ;  like  a 
school-boy's  holiday,  with  a  task  affixed  to  the  tail  of  it. 
What  a  delightful  companion  is  *  *  *  *,  if  he  did  not 
always  bring  his  tall  cousin  with  him  !  He  seems  to 
grow  with  him ;  like  some  of  those  double  births  which 
we  remember  to  have  read  of  with  such  wonder  and  de- 
light in  the  old  "  Athenian  Oracle,"  where  Swift  com- 
menced author  by  writing  Pindaric  Odes  (what  a  begin- 
ning for  him !)  upon  Sir  William  Temple.  There  is  the 
picture  of  the  brother,  with  the  little  brother  peeping  out 
at  his  shoulder;  a  species  of  fraternity,  which  we  have 
no  name  of  kin  close  enough  to  comjirehend.  When  *  *  *  * 
comes,  poking  in  his  head  and  shoulder  into  your  room, 
as  if  to  feel  his  entry,  you  think,  surely  you  have  now  got 
him  to  yourself — -what  a  three  hoiu-s'  chat  we  shall  have  ! 
— but  ever  in  the  haunch  of  him,  and  before  his  diffident 
body  is  well  disclosed  in  your  apartment,  appears  the 
haunting  shadow  of  the  cousin,  overpeering  his  modest 
kinsman,  and  sure  to  overlay  the  expected  good  talk  with 
his  insufferable  procerity  of  stature,  and  uncorrespondiug 
dwarfishness  of  observation.     Misfortunes  seldom  come 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  367 

alone.  'Tis  hard  when  a  blessing  conies  accompanied. 
Cannot  we  like  Semi)ronia,  without  sitting  down  to  chess 
with  her  eternal  brother;  or  know  Siilpicia,  without 
knowing  all  the  round  of  her  card-playing  relations  1 — 
must  my  friend's  brethren  of  necessity  be  mine  also  ?  must 
we  be  hand  and  glove  vnth  Dick  Selby  the  parson,  or  Jack 
Selby  the  calico-printer,  because  W.  S.,  who  is  neither,  but 
a  ripe  wit  and  a  critic,  has  the  misfortune  to  claim  a  common 
parentage  with  them  1  Let  him  lay  down  his  brothers  ; 
and  'tis  odds  but  we  will  cast  him  in  a  pair  of  ours  (we 
have  a  superfliLx)  to  balance  the  concession.  Let  F.  H. 
lay  down  his  garrulous  micle  ;  and  Houorius  dismiss  his 
vapid  wife,  and  superfluous  establishment  of  six  lioys  : 
things  between  boy  and  manhood — too  ripe  for  play,  too 
raw  for  conversation — that  come  in,  impudently  staring 
his  father's  old  friend  out  of  countenance  ;  and  will  neither 
aid  nor  let  alone,  the  conference ;  that  we  may  once  more 
meet  upon  equal  terms,  as  we  were  wont  to  do  in  the 
disengaged  state  of  bachelorhood. 

It  is  well  if  yom-  friend,  or  mistress,  be  content  with 
these  canicular  probations.  Few  young  ladies  but  in  this 
sense  keep  a  dog.  But  while  Rutilia  hoimds  at  you  her 
tiger  aimt ;  or  Rus]nna  expects  you  to  cherish  and  fondle 
her  viper  sister,  whom  she  has  preposterously  taken  into 
her  bosom,  to  try  stinging  conclusions  upou  your  con- 
stancy ;  they  must  not  complain  if  the  house  be  rather 
thin  of  suitors.  Scylla  must  have  bi'oken  oS  many  ex- 
cellent matches  in  her  time,  if  she  insisted  upon  all  that 
loved  her  loving  her  dogs  also. 

An  excellent  story  to  this  moral  is  told  of  ]\Ierry,  of 
Delia  Cruscan  memory..  In  tender  youth  he  loved  and 
courted  a  modest  ajjpanage  to  the  Opera — in  truth,  a 
dancer — who  had  won  him  by  the  artless  contrast  between 
her  manners  and  situation.  She  seemed  to  him  a  native 
violet,  that  had  been  transi^lanted  by  some  rude  accident 
into  that  exotic  and  artificial  hotbed.  Nor,  in  truth,  was 
she  less  genuine  and  sincere  than  she  appeared  to  him. 
He  wooed  and  won  this  flower.     Only  for  appearance  sake, 


3G8       ■  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

and  foj-  (lu4  lionour  to  the  bride's  reLations,  she  craved 
that  she  might  have  the  attendance  of  her  friends  and 
kindred  at  the  ai^proaching  solemnity.  The  request  was 
too  amiable  not  to  be  conceded ;  and  in  this  solicitude  for 
conciliating  the  good -will  of  mere  relations,  he  found  a 
presage  of  her  superior  attentions  to  himself,  when  the 
golden  shaft  should  have  "  killed  the  flock  of  all  aflfections 
else."  Tlie  morning  came  :  and  at  the  Star  and  Garter, 
Richmond — the  place  appointed  for  the  breakfasting — 
accompanied  witli  one  English  friend,  he  impatiently 
awaited  what  reinforcements  the  bride  should  bring  to 
grace  the  ceremony.  A  rich  muster  she  had  made.  They 
came  in  six  coaches — the  whole  corps  du  Ballet — French, 
Italian,  men  and  women.  Monsieur  de  B.,  the  famous 
2nrouetter  of  the  day,  led  his  fair  sjjouse,  but  craggy,  from 
the  banks  of  the  Seine.  The  Prima  Donna  had  sent  her 
excuse.  But  the  first  and  second  Butla  were  there  ;  and 
Signor  Sc — ,  and  Signora  Ch — ,  and  Madame  V — ,  with 
a  countless  cavalcade  besides  of  chorusers,  figurantes  !  at 
tlie  sight  of  whom  Merry  afterwards  declared,  that  "  then 
for  the  first  time  it  struck  him  seriously,  that  he  was 
about  to  marry — a  dancer."  But  there  was  no  help  for 
it.  Besides,  it  was  her  day ;  these  were,  in  fact,  her 
friends  and  kinsfolk.  The  assemblage,  though  whimsical, 
was  all  very  natural.  But  when  the  bride — handing  out 
of  the  last  coach  a  still  more  extraordinary  figure  than 
the  rest — presented  to  him  as  her  father — the  gentleman 
that  was  to  give  her  away — no  less  a  person  than  Signor 
Delpini  himself — with  a  sort  of  pride,  as  much  as  to  say, 
See  what  I  have  brought  to  do  us  honoirr  ! — the  thought 
of  so  extraordinaiy  a  paternity  quite  overcame  him  ;  and 
slipping  away  under  some  pretence  from  the  bride  and  her 
motley  adherents,  poor  Merry  took  horse  from  the  back 
yard  to  the  nearest  sea-coast,  from  which,  shipping  him- 
self to  America,  he  shortly  after  consoled  himself  with  a 
more  congenial  matcli  in  the  person  of  Miss  Brunton  ; 
relieved  from  his  intended  clown  father,  and  a  bevy  of 
painted  buftas  for  bridemaids. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  369 


XIV. — THAT   WE   SHOULD   EISE   "WITH   THE   LARK. 

At  what  precise  minute  that  little  aiiy  musiciau  doffs  his 
night -gear,  and  prepares  to  time  up  his  imseasonable 
matins,  we  are  not  naturalist  enough  to  determine.  But 
for  a  mere  hmnau  gentleman — that  has  no  orchestra 
business  to  call  him  from  his  warm  bed  to  such  pre- 
posterous exercises — we  take  ten,  or  half  after  ten  (eleven, 
of  com-se,  during  this  Christmas  solstice),  to  be  the  very 
earliest  hour  at  which  he  can  begin  to  think  of  abandon- 
ing his  pillow.  To  think  of  it,  we  say ;  for  to  do  it  in 
earnest  requires  another  half  hour's  good  consideration. 
Not  but  there  are  pretty  sun-risings,  as  we  are  told,  and 
such  like  gawds,  abroad  in  the  world,  in  summer-time 
especially,  some  hom-s  before  what  we  have  assigned; 
which  a  gentleman  may  see,  as  they  say,  only  for  getting 
up.  But  having  been  tempted  once  or  twice,  in  earlier 
life,  to  assist  at  those  ceremonies,  we  confess  our  cmiosity 
abated.  We  are  no  longer  ambitious  of  being  the  sun's 
com-tiei-s,  to  attend  at  his  morning  levees.  We  hold  the 
good  hoiu-s  of  the  dawn  too  sacred  to  waste  them  upon 
such  observances  ;  which  have  in  them,  besides,  something 
Pagan  and  Persic.  To  say  trath,  we  never  anticipated 
our  usual  horn-,  or  got  up  with  the  sim  (as  'tis  called),  to 
go  a  joimiey,  or  upon  a  foolish  whole  day's  pleasuring, 
but  we  suffered  for  it  all  the  long  hours  after  in  listless- 
ness  and  headaches  ;'  Nature  herself  sufficiently  declaring 
her  sense  of  our  presumption  in  aspiring  to  regulate  our 
frail  waking  courses  by  the  ineasm-es  of  that  celestial  and 
sleepless  traveller.  We  deny  not  that  there  is  something 
sprightly  and  vigorous,  at  the  outset  especially,  in  these 
break-of-day  exciu'sions.  It  is  flattering  to  get  the  start 
of  a  lazy  world  ;  to  conquer  Death  by  proxy  in  his  image. 
But  the  seeds  of  sleep  and  mortality  are  in  us ;  and  we 
pay  usually,  in  strange  qualms  before  night  falls,  the 
penalty  of  the  unnatural  inversion.  Therefore,  while  the 
busy  part  of  mankind  are  fast  huddling  on  their  clothes, 
2  E 


370  I'HE   ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

are  already  up  and  about  their  occupations,  content  to 
have  swallowed  their  sleep  by  wholesale ;  we  choose  to 
linger  a-bed  and  digest  our  dreams.  It  is  the  very  time 
to  recombine  the  wandering  images,  which  night  in  a 
confused  mass  presented  ;  to  snatch  them  from  forgetful- 
ness  ;  to  shape,  and  mould  them.  Some  people  have  no 
good  of  their  dreams.  Like  fast  feeders,  they  gulp  them 
too  grossly,  to  taste  them  curiously.  We  love  to  chew 
the  cud  of  a  foregone  vision  ;  to  collect  the  scattered  rays 
of  a  brighter  phantasm,  or  act  over  again,  with  firmer 
nerves,  the  sadder  nocturnal  tragedies ;  to  drag  into  day- 
light a  struggling  and  half- vanishing  nightmare ;  to  handle 
and  examine  the  terrors,  or  the  airy  solaces.  We  have  too 
much  respect  for  these  spiritual  communications,  to  let 
them  go  so  lightly.  We  are  not  so  stupid,  or  so  careless 
as  that  Imperial  forgetter  of  his  dreams,  that  we  should 
need  a  seer  to  remind  us  of  the  form  of  them.  They 
seem  to  us  to  have  as  much  significance  as  our  waking 
concerns ;  or  rather  to  import  us  more  nearly,  as  more 
nearly  we  approach  by  years  to  the  shadowy  world,  whither 
we  are  hastening.  We  have  shaken  hands  with  the  world's 
business  ;  we  have  done  with  it ;  we  have  discharged  our- 
self  of  it.  Why  should  we  get  up  1  we  have  neither  suit 
to  solicit,  nor  affairs  to  manage.  The  drama  has  shut  in 
upon  us  at  the  fourth  act.  We  have  nothing  here  to 
expect,  but  in  a  short  time  a  sick-bed,  and  a  dismissal. 
We  delight  to  anticipate  death  by  such  shadows  as  night 
aff"ords.  We  are  already  half  acquainted  with  ghosts. 
We  were  never  much  in  the  world.  Disappointment  early 
struck  a  dark  veil  between  us  and  its  dazzling  illusions. 
Our  spirits  showed  gray  before  our  hairs.  The  miglity 
changes  of  the  world  already  appear  as  but  the  vain  stuff' 
out  of  which  dramas  are  composed.  We  have  asked  no 
more  of  life  than  what  the  mimic  images  in  play-houses 
present  us  with.  Even  those  types  have  waxed  fainter. 
Our  clock  appears  to  have  struck.  We  are  superan- 
nuated. In  this  dearth  of  mundane  satisfiiction,  we 
contract  politic  alliances  M'ith  shadows.     It  is  good  to 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  371 

liave  frieuds  at  court.  The  extracted  media  of  dreams 
seem  no  ill  introduction  to  that  sphitual  presence,  upon 
which,  in  no  long  time,  we  expect  to  be  thrown.  AYe  are 
trying  to  know  a  little  of  the  usages  of  that  colony ;  to 
learn  the  language  and  the  faces  Ave  shall  meet  Avitli  there, 
that  we  may  be  the  less  awkward  at  our  first  coming 
among  them.  We  MiUingly  call  a  phantom  our  fellow, 
as  knowing  we  shall  soon  be  of  their  dark  companionship. 
Therefore  we  cherish  dreams.  We  try  to  spell  in  them 
the  al2ihabet  of  the  invisible  world  ;  and  think  we  know 
already  how  it  shall  be  with  us.  Those  uncouth  shapes 
which,  while  we  clung  to  flesh  and  blood,  affrighted  us, 
have  become  familiar.  We  feel  attenuated  into  their 
meagre  essences,  and  have  given  the  hand  of  half-way 
apiDroach  to  incorporeal  being.  We  once  thought  life  to 
be  something ;  but  it  has  unaccountably  fallen  from  us 
before  its  time.  Therefore  we  choose  to  dally  with  visions. 
The  Sim  has  no  purposes  of  om-s  to  Ught  us  to.  Why 
slioidd  we  get  up  1 

XV. THAT  WE  SHOULD  LIE  DOWN  WITH  THE  LAMB. 

We  could  never  quite  understand  the  philosophy  of  this 
arrangement,  or  the  wisdom  of  oiu"  ancestors  in  sending 
us  for  instruction  to  these  wooUy  beclfeUows.  A  sheep, 
when  it  is  dark,  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  shut  his  silly 
eyes,  and  sleep  if  he  can.  Man  found  out  long  sixes — 
Hail,  candle-light !  without  disparagement  to  sun  or  moon, 
the  kindliest  luminary  of  the  three — if  we  may  not  rather 
style  thee  their  radiant  deputy,  mild  viceroy  of  the  moon  ! 
— -We  love  to  read,  talk,  sit  silent,  eat,  drink,  sleep,  by 
candle-light.  They  are  everybody's  sun  and  moon.  This 
is  our  peculiar  and  household  planet.  Wanting  it,  what 
savage  unsocial  nights  must  our  ancestors  have  spent, 
wintering  in  caves  and  uniUumined  fastnesses !  They 
must  have  lain  about  and  giiunbled  at  one  another  in  the 
dark.  What  repartees  could  have  passed,  when  you  must 
have  felt  about  for  a  smile,  and  handled  a  neighbour's 


372  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

cheek  to  be  sure  that  he  understood  it  1  This  accounts 
for  the  seriousness  of  tlie  elder  poetiy.  It  has  a  sombre 
cast  (try  Hesiod  or  Ossian),  derived  from  the  tradition  of 
those  unhmtern'd  nights.  Jokes  came  in  with  candles. 
We  wonder  how  they  saw  to  pick  up  a  pin,  if  they  had 
any.  How  did  they  sup  1  what  a  melange  of  chance 
carving  they  must  have  made  of  it  1 — here  one  had  got  a 
leg  of  a  goat  when  he  wanted  a  horse's  shoidder — there 
another  had  dipped  his  scooped  palm  in  a  kid-skin  of  wild 
honey,  when  he  meditated  right  mare's  milk.  There  is 
neither  good  eating  nor  drinking  in  fresco.  Who,  even 
in  these  civilized  times,  has  never  experienced  this,  when 
at  some  economic  table  he  has  commenced  dining  after 
dusk,  and  waited  for  the  flavour  till  the  lights  came  1  The 
senses  absolutely  give  and  take  reciiDrocally.  Can  you 
tell  pork  from  veal  in  the  dark  1  or  distinguish  Sherris 
from  pure  Malaga  ?  Take  away  the  candle  from  the 
smoking  man ;  by  the  glimmering  of  the  left  ashes,  he 
knows  that  he  is  still  smoking,  but  he  knows  it  only  by 
an  inference ;  till  the  restored  light,  coming  in  aid  of  the 
olfactories,  reveals  to  both  senses  the  fidl  aroma.  Then 
how  he  redoubles  his  puffs  !  how  he  burnishes  ! — there  is 
absolutely  no  such  thing  as  reading  but  by  a  candle.  We 
have  tried  the  affectation  of  a  book  at  noon-day  in  gardens, 
and  in  sultry  arbours ;  but  it  was  labour  thrown  away. 
Those  gay  motes  in  the  beam  come  about  you,  hovering 
and  teasing,  like  so  many  coquettes,  that  will  have  you 
all  to  their  self  and  are  jealous  of  your  abstractions.  By 
the  midnight  taper,  the  writer  digests  his  meditations. 
By  the  same  light  we  must  apjffoach  to  their  perusal,  if 
we  would  catch  the  flame,  the  odour.  It  is  a  mockery, 
all  that  is  I'eported  of  the  influential  Phoebus.  No  true 
poem  ever  owed  its  birth  to  the  sim's  light.  They  are 
abstracted  works — 

Things  that  were  born,  when  none  but  the  still  night, 
And  his  dumb  candle,  saw  his  pinching  throes. 

]\Iany,  daylight — daylight  miglit  furnisli  the  images,  the 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  373 

crude  material ;  Init  for  the  fine  .shajnngs,  the  true  turn- 
ing and  filing  (as  mine  author  hath  it),  they  must  be  con- 
tent to  hold  their  inspiration  of  the  candle.  The  mild 
internal  light,  that  reveals  them,  like  fires  on  the  domestic 
hearth,  goes  out  in  the  sunshine.  Night  and  silence  caU 
out  the  starry  fancies.  Milton's  Morning  Hymn  in  Para- 
dise, we  would  hold  a  good  wager,  was  penned  at  mid- 
night ;  and  Taylor's  rich  description  of  a  sunrise  smells 
decidedly  of  the  taper.  Even  om-self,  in  these  our  hmnliler 
lucubrations  tune  our  best-measm'ed  cadences  (Prose  has 
her  cadences)  not  unfrequently  to  the  charm  of  the 
drowsier  watchman,  "blessing  the  doors;"  or  the  wild 
sweep  of  winds  at  midnight.  Even  now  a  loftier  specu- 
lation than  we  have  yet  attemijted,  courts  om*  endeavours. 
We  would  indite  something  about  the  Solar  Sj'stem. — ■ 
Betty,  bring  the  candles. 

XVI. THAT  A  SULKY  TEMPER  IS  A  MISFORTUNE. 

We  grant  that  it  is,  and  a  very  serious  one — to  a  man's 
friends,  and  to  all  that  have  to  do  wdth  him  ;  but  whether 
the  condition  of  the  man  himself  is  so  much  to  be  de- 
plored, may  admit  of  a  question.  We  can  speak  a  little 
to  it,  being  oureelf  but  lately  recovered — we  whisper  it 
in  confidence,  reader — out  of  a  long  and  desperate  fit  of 
the  sidlens.  Was  the  ciue  a  blessing  1  The  conviction 
which  wrought  it,  came  too  clearly  to  leave  a  scruple  of 
the  fanciful  injuries — for  they  were  mere  fancies — which 
had  provoked  the  himioiu*.  But  the  humoiu-  itself  was 
too  self-pleasing  while  it  lasted — we  know  how  bare  we 
lay  oiu'self  in  the  confession — to  be  abandoned  all  at  once 
with  the  grounds  of  it.  We  still  brood  over  wi-ongs  which 
we  know  to  have  been  imaginary ;  and  for  our  old  ac- 
quaintance jST ,  whom  we  find  to  have  been  a  truer 

friend  than  we  took  hiiu  for,  we  substitute  some  phantom 
— a  Cains  or  a  Titius — as  like  him  as  we  dare  to  form  it, 
to  wreak  our  yet  imsatisfied  resentments  on.  It  is  morti- 
fying to  fall  at. once  from  the  pinnacle  of  neglect ;  to  forego 


374  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

the  idea  of  having  been  ill-used  and  contumaciously  treated 
by  an  old  friend.  The  first  thing  to  aggrandize  a  man  in 
his  own  conceit,  is  to  conceive  of  himself  as  neglected. 
There  let  him  fix  if  he  can.  To  imdeceive  him  is  to  de- 
prive him  of  the  most  tickling  morsel  within  the  range  of 
self-comijlacency.  No  flatteiy  can  come  near  it.  Happy 
is  he  who  suspects  his  friend  of  an  injustice  ;  but  supremely 
blest,  who  thinks  all  his  friends  in  a  conspiracy  to  depress 
and  undervalue  him.  There  is  a  pleasure  (we  sing  not  to 
the  profane)  far  beyond  the  reach  of  all  that  the  world 
counts  joy — a  deep,  endm'ing  satisfaction  in  the  depths, 
where  the  supei-ficial  seek  it  not,  of  discontent.  Were  we 
to  recite  one  half  of  this  mystery — which  we  were  let  into 
by  om"  late  dissatisfaction,  aU  the  world  would  be  in  love 
with  disrespect ;  we  shoiild  wear  a  slight  for  a  bracelet, 
and  neglects  and  contimiacies  would  be  the  only  matter 
for  courtship.  Unlike  to  that  mysterious  book  in  the 
Apocalyjxse,  the  study  of  tliis  mystery  is  unpalatable  only 
in  the  commencement.  The  first  sting  of  a  suspicion  is 
grievous ;  but  wait — out  of  that  woiind,  which  to  flesh 
and  blood  seemed  so  difllcult,  there  is  lialm  and  lioney  to 
be  extracted.  Your  friend  passed  you  on  such  or  such  a 
day, — having  in  his  company  one  that  you  conceived  worse 
than  ambiguously  disposed  towards  you, — passed  you  in 
the  street  without  notice.  To  be  sm-e,  he  is  something 
short-sighted ;  and  it  was  in  your  jwwer  to  have  accosted 
him.  But  facts  and  sane  inferences  are  trifles  to  a  true 
ade^it  in  the  science  of  dissatisfaction.     He  must  have 

seen  you ;  and  S ,  who  was  with  him,  must  have  been 

the  cause  of  the  contempt.  It  galls  you,  and  well  it  may. 
But  Iiave  patience.  Go  home,  and  make  the  worst  of  it, 
and  you  are  a  made  man  from  this  time.  Shut  yourself 
up,  and — rejecting,  as  an  enemy  to  your  peace,  every 
whispering  suggestion  that  but  insinuates  there  may  be  a 
mistake — reflect  seriously  upon  the  many  lesser  instances 
which  you  had  begun  to  perceive,  in  proof  of  yoiu-  friend's 
disaffection  towards  you.  None  of  them  singly  was  much 
to  the  pm'pose,  but  the  aggregate  weight  is  positive ;  and 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  375 

yoii  have  this  last  affront  to  cleuch  them.  Thus  far  the 
process  is  anything  but  agreeable.  But  now  to  yoiu-  relief 
comes  the  comparative  faculty.  You  conjiu'e  up  all  the 
kind  feelings  you  have  had  for  your  friend  ;  what  you  have 
been  to  him,  and  what  you  would  have  been  to  him,  if  he 
woidd  have  suffered  you ;  how  you  defended  him  in  this 
or  that  place  ;  and  his  good  name — his  literaiy  reputation, 
and  so  forth,  was  always  dearer  to  you  than  your  own  ! 
Your  heart,  spite  of  itself,  yearns  towards  him.  You 
could  weep  tears  of  blood  but  for  a  restraining  pride. 
How  say  you  1  do  you  not  yet  begin  to  apprehend  a  com- 
fort ? — some  allay  of  sweetness  in  the  bitter  waters  ?  Stop 
not  here,  nor  penuiiously  cheat  yourself  of  yoiu*  reversions. 
You  are  on  vantage  groimd.  Enlarge  yom*  specidations, 
and  take  in  the  rest  of  your  friends,  as  a  sjiark  kindles 
more  sparks.  Was  there  one  among  them  who  has  not 
to  you  proved  hollow,  false,  shppery  as  water  1  Begin  to 
think  that  the  relation  itself  is  inconsistent  with  mortality. 
That  the  veiy  idea  of  friendshii^,  with  its  component  parts, 
as  honour,  fidelity,  steadiness,  exists  but  in  your  single 
bosom.  Image  yoiu'self  to  yourself  as  the  only  possible 
friend  in  a  world  incapable  of  that  communion.  Now  the 
gloom  thickens.  The  little  star  of  self-love  twinkles,  that 
is  to  encourage  you  through  deejier  glooms  than  this.  You 
are  not  yet  at  the  half  point  of  your  elevation.  You 
are  not  yet,  believe  me,  half  sulky  enough.  Adverting  to 
the  world  in  general  (as  these  circles  in  the  mind  -Rill 
spread  to  infinity),  reflect  with  what  strange  injustice  you 
have  been  treated  in  quarters  where  (setting  gratitude  and 
the  exi:)ectation  of  friendly  returns  aside  as  chimeras)  you 
pretended  no  claim  beyond  justice,  the  naked  due  of  all 
men.  Think  the  veiy  idea  of  right  and  fit  fled  from  the 
earth,  or  your  breast  the  solitaiy  receptacle  of  it  till  you 
have  swelled  yourself  into  at  least  one  hemisphere ;  the 
other  being  the  vast  Arabia  Stony  of  yoiu"  friends  and  the 
world  aforesaid.  To  grow  bigger  every  moment  in  yoiu- 
own  conceit,  and  the  world  to  lessen ;  to  deify  yourself  at 
the  expense  of  your  species ;  to  judge  the  world — this  is 


370  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

the  acme  and  supreme  point  of  your  mystery — these  tlie 
true  Pleasures  of  Sulkiness.  We  profess  no  more  of 
this  grand  secret  than  what  ourself  experimented  on  cue 
rainy  afternoon  in  the  last  week,  sulking  in  oiu:  study. 
We  had  proceeded  to  the  penultimate  point,  at  which  tlie 
tnie  adept  seldom  stops,  where  the  consideration  of  benefit 
forgot  is  about  to  merge  in  the  meditation  of  general 
injustice — when  a  knock  at  the  door  was  followed  by  the 
entrance  of  the  very  frieiid  whose  not  seeing  of  us  in  the 
morning  (for  we  will  now  confess  tlie  case  our  own),  an 
accidental  oversight,  had  given  rise  to  so  much  agreeable 
generalization  !  To  mortify  us  still  more,  and  take  down 
the  whole  flattering  superstructm-e  which  pride  had  piled 
upon  neglect,  he  had  brought  in  his  hand  the  identical 
S ,  in  whose  favour  we  had  suspected  him  of  the  con- 
tumacy. Asseverations  were  needless,  where  the  frank 
manner  of  them  both  was  convictive  of  the  injui'ious  nature 
of  the  suspicion.  We  fancied  that  they  perceived  om* 
embarrassment ;  but  were  too  proud,  or  something  else, 
to  confess  to  the  secret  of  it.  We  had  been  but  too  lately 
in  the  condition  of  the  noble  patient  in  Argos  : — 

Qui  se  credebat  miros  andire  tragceJos, 
In  vacuo  Iretus  sessor  plausorque  tlieatro — 

and  could  have  exclaimed  with  equal  reason  against  the 
friendly  hands  that  cured  us — 

Pol,  me  occidistis,  amici, 
Noil  servastis,  ait  ;  cui  sic  extorta  voluptas, 
Et  demptus  per  vim  mentis  gratissimus  error. 


NOTES. 


RFXOLLECTIOXS  OF  THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.— P.  1. 
(London  Magazine,  August  1820.) 

Charles  Lamb  left  Chri.st's  Hospital  in  the  year  1789,.  at  the 
age  of  fourteen,  and  at  some  date  ^\^thiu  the  next  two  years  he 
obtained  a  situation  in  the  Soi;th-Sea  House.  His  father's 
emploj'er,  Samuel  Salt,  the  Bencher  of  the  Inner  Tem^ile,  was 
a  Deputy-Governor  of  the  South-Sea  House  at  the  time,  and  it 
was  doubtless  by  the  influence  of  this  kind  friend  that  the 
appointment  was  obtained.  Charles's  elder  brother,  John,  was 
already  a  clerk  in  the  office.  In  the  Royal  Calendar  for  1792 
John  Lamb's  name  appears  as  holding  the  position  of  Deputy- 
Accountant.  Other  of  the  names  mentioned  by  Lamb  in  this 
Essay  are  also  found  in  the  official  records  of  the  day — John 
Tipp,  on  whose  promotion  to  the  office  of  Accountant  (as  "John 
Tipp,  Esq."),  John  Lamb  succeeded  to  the  post  just  mentioned  ; 
W.  Evans,  Deputy-Cashier  in  1791  ;  Thomas  Tame,  Deputy- 
Cashier  in  1793  ;  and  Kichard  riumer,  Deputy  -  Secretary  in 
1800,  Lamb's  fondness  for  gratuitous  mystification  is  thus 
curiously  illustrated  in  the  insinuation  towards  the  close  of  the 
Essay  that  the  names  he  has  recorded  are  fictitious,  after  all. 
Lamb's  old  colleague,  Elia,  whose  name  he  borrowed,  has  not 
(as  far  as  I  am  aware)  been  yet  traced  in  the  annals  of  the  office. 
But  he  probably  held,  like  Lamb  himself,  a  very  subordinate 
position. 

A  full  account  of  the  famous  South-Sea  Bubble  ■^^ill  be  found 
in  Lord  Stanhope's  History,  and  also  in  Chambers's  Booh  of  Bays. 
For  an  account  of  the  constitution  of  the  Companj-  at  the  end 
of  the  last  century,  Hughson's  Walls  through  Londmi  (1805) 
may  be  consulted.  He  .says — "Notwithstanding  the  terms  of 
the  charter  by  which  we  are  to  look  upon  this  Company  as 
merchants,  it  is  observable  that  they  never  carried  on  any  con- 
siderable trade,  and  now  they  have  no  trade.  They  only  receive 
interest  for  their  capital  wliich  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Govern- 


378  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

ineiit,  ami  £8000  out  of  the  Treasury  towards  the  expense 
attending  the  management  of  their  affairs,  which  is  done  by  a 
Governor,  Sub  -  Governor,  Deputy  -  Governor,  and  twenty -one 
Directors  annually  chosen  on  the  6th  of  February  by  a  majority 
of  votes."  Pennant  (who  is  referred  to  in  this  Essay,  and  wrote 
in  1790)  says — "In  this  (Threadneedle)  Street  also  stands  the 
Soutli-Sea  House,  the  place  in  which  the  Company  did  business, 
when  it  had  any  to  transact." 

Henry  Man,  the  Wit,  etc. — The  two  "forgotten  volumes" — 
"Miscellaneous  Works  in  Verse  and  Prose  of  the  late  Henry  Man. 
London,  1802" — are  now  before  me.  They  contain  a  variety 
of  light  and  amusing  papers  in  verse  and  prose.  The  humour 
of  them,  however,  is  naturally  still  more  out  of  date  now  than 
in  Lamb's  day.  One  of  the  epigrams  found  there  may  be  said 
to  have  become  classical, — that  upon  the  two  Earls  (Spencer 
and  Sandwich)  who  invented  respectively  "half  a  coat"  and 
"half  a  dinner."     Henry  Man  was  Deputy-Secretary  in  1793. 

Eattle-headcd  Phimer. — Lamb  had  a  special  interest  in  the 
family  bearing  this  name,  because  his  grandmother,  ilary  Field, 
was  for  more  than  half  a  century  housekeeper  at  the  Dower 
House  of  the  family,  lilakesware  in  Hertfordshire.  The  pre- 
sent Mr.  Plumer,  of  AUerton,  Totness,  a  grandson  of  Ilichard 
Plumer  of  the  South-Sea  House,  by  no  means  acquiesces  in  the 
tradition  here  recorded  as  to  his  grandfather's  origin.  Ho 
believes  that  though  the  links  are  missing,  Richard  Plumer 
was  descended  in  regular  line  from  the  Baronet,  Sir  Walter 
Plumer,  who  died  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Lamb's 
memory  has  failed  him  here  in  one  respect.  The  "Bachelor 
Uncle,"  Walter  Plumer,  uncle  of  William  Plumer  of  Blakeswai'e, 
was  most  certainly  not  a  bachelor  (see  the  Pedigree  of  the  family 
in  Cussans'  Hertfordshire).  Lamb  is  further  inaccurate  as  to 
the  connection  of  this  Walter  Plumer  wth  the  affair  of  the 
franks.  A  reference  to  Johnson's  Life  of  Cave  will  show  that 
it  was  Cave,  and  not  Plumer,  who  was  summoned  before  the 
House  of  Commons.  Walter  Plumer,  member  for  Aldborough 
and  A]>pleby,  had  given  a  frank  to  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough, 
which  liad  been  challenged  by  Cave,  who  held  the  post  of  Clerk 
of  the  Franks  in  the  House  of  Commons.  For  this,  Cave  was 
(•ited  before  the  House,  as  a  Breach  of  Privilege. 

In  the  passage  on  John  Tipp,  Lamb,  speaking  of  his  fine 
suite  of  rooms  in  Threadneedle  Street,  adds — "I  know  not  who 
is  the  occupier  of  them  now."  Wlien  the  Essay  first  appeared 
in  the  Lmulon  Maijnzinc,  the  note  in  brackets  was  appended. 
Thus  we  learn  that  John  Lamb  was  still,  in  1820,  occupying 
rooms  in  the  old  lunlilin" 


NOTES.  379 

Mild,  child-like,  pastoral  M .  — "  ilaynard,  liangVl  him- 
self" (Lamb's  "  Key  ").  Mr.  T.  Mayiiard  was  chief  clerk  of  the 
Old  Aimuities  and  Three  per  Cents  from  1788  to  1793.  His 
name  does  not  appear  in  the  almanacs  of  the  day  after  this  date. 

OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.— P.  10. 

(London  Magazine,  October  1S20.) 

Lamb  was  fond  of  spending  his  annual  holiday  in  one  or 
other  of  the  great  university  towns,  more  otten  perhaps  in 
Cambridge.  It  was  on  one  such  visit,  it  will  be  remembered, 
that  Charles  and  ]\Iary  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  little 
Emma  Isola.  On  its  first  appearance  in  the  London,  the  paper 
was  dated  "August  5,  1820.  From  my  rooms  facing  the  Bod- 
leian." A  sonnet  wiiten  a  year  before  at  Cambridge,  tells  of 
the  charm  that  University  associations  had  for  one  who  had 
been  debarred  through  infirmity  of  health  and  poverty  from  a 
university  education  :  — 

"  I  was  not  trained  in  Acadenuc  bowers, 
And  to  those  learned  streams  I  nothing  owe 
Which  copious  from  those  tmu  fair  founts  do  flow  ; 
Mine  have  been  anything  but  studious  hours. 
Yet  can  I  fancy,  wandering  'ndd  thj-  towers, 
Myself  a  nursling,  Granta,  of  thy  lap  ; 
My  brow  seems  tightening  with  the  Doctor's  cap, 
And  I  walk  gowned  ;  feel  unusual  powers. 
Strange  forms  of  logic  clothe  my  admiring  speech, 
Old  Ramus'  ghost  is  busy  at  my  brain  ; 
And  my  skull  teems  with  notions  infinite. 
Be  still,  j'e  reeds  of  Camus,  while  I  teach 
Truths  which  transcend  the  searching  schoolmen's  vein. 
And  half  had  staggered  that  stout  Stagirite  !" 

"  Andrew  and  Jolm,  men  famous  in  old  times,"  rpioted,  (piite 
at  random,  from  Paradise  Regained,  ii.  7. 

G.  Z».— George  Dyer  (1755-1841),  educated  at  Christ's  Hos- 
pital and  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  A  compiler  and 
editor  and  general  worker  for  the  booksellers,  short-sighted, 
absent-minded,  and  simple,  for  whom  Lamb  had  a  life-long 
affection.  He  compiled,  among  other  books,  a  History  of  the 
University  and  Colleges  of  Cambridge,  and  contributed  the 
original  matter  (preface  excepted)  to  Valpy's  edition  of  the 
Classics.  The  account  of  him  given  by  Crabb  Robinson  in  his 
Diary  well  illustrates  Lamb's  frecpient  references  to  this  singular 
character.  "  He  was  one  of  the  best  creatures,  UKU-ally,  that 
ever  breathed.     He  was  the  son  of  a  watchman  in  Wapping, 


380  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

and  was  put  to  a  cliarity  school  by  some  pious  Dissenting  ladies. 
He  afterwards  went  to  Christ's  Hospital,  and  from  there  was 
sent  to  (Cambridge.  He  was  a  scholar,  but  to  the  end  of  his 
days  (and  he  lived  to  be  eighty-five)  was  a  bookseller's  drudge. 
He  led  a  life  of  literary  labour  in  poverty.  He  made  indexes, 
corrected  the  press,  and  occasionally  gave  lessons  in  Latin  and 
Greek.  When  an  undergraduate  at  Cambridge  he  became  a 
hearer  of  Robert  Robinson,  and  consequently  a  Unitarian.  This 
closed  the  church  against  him,  and  he  never  had  a  fellowship. 
...  He  wrote  one  "good  book—  Tlic  Life  of  liobcrt  RoUnson, 
which  I  have  heard  Wordsworth  mention  as  one  of  the  best 
works  of  biography  in  the  language.  .  .  .  Dyer  had  the  kindest 
heart  and  simplest  manners  imaginable.  It  was  literally  the 
case  witli  him  that  he  would  give  away  his  last  guinea.  .  .  . 
Not  many  years  before  his  death  he  married  his  laundress,  by 
the  advice  of  his  friends— a  very  worthy  woman.  He  said  to 
me  once,  'Mrs.  Dyer  is  a  woman  of  excellent  natural  sense, 
but  she  is  not  literate.'  That  is,  she  could  neither  read  nor 
wi-ite.  Dyer  was  blind  for  a  few  years  before  his  death.  I  used 
occasionally  to  go  on  a  Sunday  morning  to  read  to  him.  .  .  . 
After  he  came  to  London,  Dyer  lived  always  in  some  very 
humble  chambers  in  Clifford's  Inn,  Fleet  Street. " 

Give  me  Agur's  Wish. — See  the  Book  of  Proverbs  xxx.  10. 

Our  friend  3f.'s  in  Bedford  Sqiiare.—M.  was  Basil  Montagu, 
Q.C.,  and  editor  of  Bacoii.  Mrs.  M.  was  of  course  Irving's 
"noble  lady,"  so  familiar  to  us  from  Garlyla' s  Jicminisce^ices. 
"Pretty  A. "S."  was  Mrs.  Montagu's  daughter,  Anne  Skepper, 
afterwards  the  wife  of  Mr.  Procter  (Barry  Cornwall).  In  his 
Memoir  of  Lamb,  Mr.  Procter  significantly  remarks  that  he 
coidd  vouch  personally  for  the  truth  of  this  anecdote  of  Dyer's 
absent-mindedness. 

Still  less  have  I  curiosity  to  disturb  the  cider  repose  of  MSS. — 
In  the  London  Magazine  was  appended  the  following  note  :_ — 

"There  is  something  to  me  repugnant  at  any  time  in  written 
hand.  The  text  never  seems  determinate.  Print  settles  it. 
I  had  thought  of  the  Lycidas  as  of  a  full-grown  beauty— as 
springing  up  with  all  its  parts  absolute— till,  in  an  evil  hour, 
I  was  shown  the  original  copy  of  it,  together  with  the  other 
minor  poems  of  its  author,  in  the  library  of  Trinity,  kept  like 
some  treasure,  to  be  proud  of.  I  wish  they  had  thrown  them 
in  the  Cam,  or  sent  them  after  the  latter  Cantos  of  Spenser, 
into  the  Irish  Channel.  How  it  staggered  me  to  see  the  fine 
things  in  their  ore  !  interlined,  corrected  !  as  if  their  words 
were  mortal,  alterable,  displaceable  at  pleasure  !  as  if  they 
might  have  been  otherwise,  and  just  as  good  !  as  if  inspiration 
were  made  up  of  parts,  and  these  fluctuating,  successive,  in- 


NOTES.  381 

different  !  I  will  never  go  into  the  workshop  of  any  great  artist 
again,  nor  desire  a  sight  of  his  picture  till  it  is  fairly  off  the 
easel :  no,  not  if  Raphael  were  to  be  alive  again,  and  painting 
another  Galatea." 

CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 

—V.  17. 

{London  Mwjazliic,  November  l«iiO.) 

The  first  collected  edition  of  Lamb's  Prose  and  Verse  appeared 
in  the  year  1818,  published  by  C.  and  J.  Oilier.  Among  other 
papers  it  contained  one  entitled  Recollections  of  Chrisl's  llosjiital. 
The  Essay  was  a  reprint  from  the  Gentleman  fi  Magazine  for  June 
1813,  where  it  originally  owed  its  appearance  to  an  alleged  abuse 
of  the  presentation  system  in  force  at  the  Blue  Coat  School. 

This  earlier  article  on  Christ's  Hospital  had  been  written  in 
a  seriojis  and  genuine  vein  of  enthusiasm  for  the  value  and 
dignity  of  the  old  Foundation.  Lamb  now  seems  to  have 
remembered  that  there  were  other  aspects  of  schoolboy  life 
under  its  shelter  that  might  be  profitably  dealt  with.  The 
"poor  friendless  boy,"  in  whose  character  he  now  writes,  was 
his  old  schoolfellow  Coleridge,  and  the  general  truth  of  the 
sketch  is  shown  liy  Coleridge's  own  reference  to  his  schooldays 
in  the  early  chapters  of  his  Biogra'pMa  Literaria.  ' '  In  my 
friendless  wanderings  on  our  leave-days  (for  I  was  an  orphan, 
and  had  scarce  any  connections  in  London)  liighly  was  I 
delighted  if  any  passenger,  especially  if  he  were  dressed  in 
black,  would  enter  into  conversation  with  me." 

Lamb's  love  of  mystification  shows  itself  in  this  Essay  in 
many  forms.  "  Sweet  Calne  in  Wiltshire  "  is  a  quite  gi-atuitous 
substitution  for  Ottery  St.  Mary  in  Devonshire,  the  home  after 
which  young  Coleridge  did  actually  yearn.  Coleridge  did,  how- 
ever, reside  for  a  time  at  Calne  in  later  life.  Moreover,  as  will 
be  seen,  the  disguise  of  identity  with  Coleridge  is  dropped 
altogether  towards  the  close  of  the  Essay.  The  general  account 
of  the  school  here  given  it  is  interesting  to  compare  with  that 
given  by  Leigh  Hunt  in  his  autobiography. 

L.  's  governor  {so  we  called  the  patron  who  2Jrescntcd  us  to  the 
foundation)  lived  in  a  Tnanner  under  his  jjaternal  roof — It  was 
under  Samuel  Salt's  roof  that  John  Lamb  and  his  family 
lived,  and  as  the  presentation  to  Christ's  was  oljtained  from  a 
friend  of  Salt's,  Lamb  considers  it  fair  to  speak  of  the  old 
Bencher  as  the  actual  benefactor. 

There  tvas  one  IT . — Hodges  (Lamb's  "  Key  "). 

"  To  feed  our  mind  ivith  idle  portraiture,"  a  line  apparently 


382  TIIK  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

extempoi'iseil  liy  Lamb  .us  a  lian.slation  of  tlic  passage  in  Virgil 
to  which  ho  refers,  ' '  animam  picturd  jiascit  inani. " 

' ' '  Twas  said 
lie  ale  strange  flesh." 

As  usual,  a  new  quotation  formed  out  of  Lamb's  general 
recollection  of  an  old  one.  He  had  in  his  mind,  no  doubt,  a 
passage  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra  (Act  L  Sc.  4) : — 

"  It  is  reported  thou  didst  eat  strange  flesh 
Which  some  did  die  to  look  on. " 

Mr.  Hathaway,  the  then  Steward. — Perry  was  steward  in 
Lamb's  day  (see  the  former  Essay  on  Christ's  Hospital).  Ivcigh 
Hunt  says  of  his  successor  : — "  Tlie  name  of  the  steward,  a  thin 
stiff"  man  of  invincible  formality  of  demeanour,  admirably  fitted 
to  render  encroachment  impossible,  was  Hathaway.  We  of  the 
gi'ammar  school  used  to  call  him  '  the  Yeoman '  on  account  of 
Shakspeare  having  married  the  daughter  of  a  man  of  that  name, 
designated  as  'a  substantial  yeoman.'" 

The  Ecv.  James  Boyer  became  upper  master  of  Christ's  in 
1777.  For  the  better  side  of  Boyer's  (j^ualifications  as  a  teacher, 
see  Coleridge's  BiograpMa  Literaria,  the  passage  beginning, 
"At  school  I  enjoyed  the  inestimable  advantage  of  a  very 
sensible,  though  at  the  same  time  a  very  severe  master."  Else- 
where Coleridge  entirely  confirms  Lamb's  and  Leigh  Hunt's 
accounts  of  Boyer's  violent  temper,  and  severe  discipline.  Lamb 
never  reached  the  position  of  Grecian,  but  it  is  the  tradition  in 
Christ's  Hospital  that  he  was  under  Boyer's  instruction  some 
time  before  leaving  school. 

The  Rev.  Matthew  Field. — Some  charming  additional  traits 
in  this  character,  entirely  confirming  Lamb's  account,  will  be 
found  in  Leigh  Hunt's  autobiography.  "A  man  of  a  more 
handsome  incompetence  for  his  situation  perhaps  did  not  exist. 
He  came  late  of  a  morning  ;  went  away  soon  in  the  afternoon  ; 
and  used  to  walk  u]i  and  down,  languidly  liearing  his  cane,  as 
if  it  were  a  lily,  and  hearing  our  eternal  Dominuscs  and  jis  in 
jrracsentis  with  an  air  of  ineffable  endurance.  Often  he  did  not 
hear  at  all.  It  was  a  joke  with  us  when  any  of  our  friends  came 
to  the  door,  and  we  asked  his  permission  to  go  to  them,  to 
address  him  with  some  preposterous  question  wide  of  the  mark  ; 
to  which  he  used  to  assent.  We  would  say,  for  instance,  '  Are 
you  not  a  great  fool,  sir?'  or  '  Lsn't  your  daughter  a  pretty 
girl?'  to  which  he  would  reply,  'Yes,  child.'  When  he  con- 
descended to  hit  us  with  the  cane,  he  made  a  face  as  if  he  were 
taking  physic. " 

The  Authur  of  the  Country  Sjjcctator. — For  an  amusing  ac- 


NOTES.  383 

count  of  the  origin  ot  tliis  periodical,  see  Mozley's  llaninisccncea 
of  Oriel  College,  vol.  ii.  addenda. 

Dr.  T c. — Dr.  TroUope,  who  succeeded  Boyer  as  head- 
master. 

Th .—Thornton  (Lamb's  "Key"). 

Poor  S .  — "  Scott,  died  in  Bedlam  "  (Lamli'.s  "  Key  "). 

Ill-fated   M .— "Maunde,    dismiss'd    school"    (Lamb's 

"Key"). 

' '  Finding  some  of  Edward's  Eacc 
Unha2)2nj,  pass  their  annals  by. " 

Adapted  from  Matt.  Priors  Carmen  Saxulare  fu/'  1700  {stanza 
viii.) — 

"  Janus,  mighty  deity. 

Be  kind,  and  as  thy  searching  eye 

Does  our  modern  story  trace, 

Finding  some  of  Stuart's  race 

Unhapi^y,  imss  tlieir  annals  by." 

C.  V.  Lc  G. — Charles  Valentine  Le  Grice  and  a  younger 
brother  of  the  name  of  Samuel  were  Grecians  and  prominent 
members  of  the  school  in  Lamb's  day.  They  were  from  Corn- 
wall. Charles  became  a  clergyman  and  held  a  living  in  his 
native  county.  Samuel  went  into  the  army,  and  died  in  the 
West  Indies.  It  was  he  who  was  staying  in  London  in  the 
autumn  of  1796,  and  showed  himself  a  true  friend  to  the  Lambs 
at  the  season  of  the  mother's  death.  Lamlj  writes  to  Coleridge, 
"  Sam  Le  Grice,  who  was  then  in  town,  was  with  me  the  tlu-ee 
or  four  first  days,  and  was  as  a  brother  to  me  ;  gave  up  every 
hour  of  his  time  to  the  very  hmting  of  his  health  and  spirits 
in  constant  attendance,  and  humouring  my  poor  ftxther  ;  talked 
with  him,  read  to  him,  played  at  cribbage  with  him."  He  was 
a  ' '  mad  wag, "  according  to  Leigh  Hunt,  who  tells  some  plea- 
sant anecdotes  of  him,  but  must  have  been  a  good-hearted  fellow. 
"Le  Grice  the  elder  was  a  wag,"  adds  Hunt,  "like  his  brother, 
but  more  staid.  He  went  into  the  church  as  he  ought  to  do, 
and  married  a  rich  widow.  He  published  a  translation,  abridged, 
of  the  celebrated  pastoral  of  Longus  ;  and  report  at  school  made 
him  the  author  of  a  little  anonymous  tract  on  the  Art  of  Poking 
the  Fire." 

"  Which  two  Ihchold,"  etc. — This  is  Fuller's  account  of  the 
wit- combats  between  Ben  Jonson  and  Shaksxieare. 

The  Junior  Le  G.  and  F. — The  latter  of  these  was  named 
Favell,  also  a  Grecian  in  the  school.     These  two,  according  to 


384  THE   ESSAYS   OF   ELIA. 

Leigh  Hunt,  when  at  the  nniversity  wrote  to  tlie  Duke  of  York 
to  ask  for  commissions  in  the  army.  "  The  Duke  good-naturedly 
sent  them."  Favell  was  killed  in  the  Peninsula.  His  epitaph 
will  be  found  on  a  tablet  in  Great  St.  Andrew's  Church,  Cam- 
bridge : —  "Samuel,  a  Captain  in  the  61st  Regiment,  having 
been  engaged  in  the  expedition  to  Egypt,  afterwards  served  in 
the  principal  actions  in  the  Peninsula,  and  fell  whilst  heading 
his  men  to  the  charge  in  the  Battle  of  Salamanca,  July  21,  1812." 
We  shall  meet  with  him  again,  under  a  different  initial,  in  the 
essay  on  Pooi-  lldaLluns. 

THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN.— P.  31. 
{London  Magazine,  December  1S20.) 

llal'pk  Bkjod. — John  Fenwick,  editor  of  tlic  Albion.      See 
later  essay  on  Nctvspavcrs  Thirty-five  Years  Ago. 
' '  To  slacken  virtue  and  abate  her  edge 

Tha7i 2]>'omj}t  her  to  do  aught  may  incrit  2Jraise.'" 
Paradise  Regained,  ii.  455. 

Comhcrhatch,  more  properly  Comberbacl;  the  name  adopted 
by  Coleridge  when  he  enlisted  in  the  15th  Light  Dragoons,  in 
Dec.  1793.  He  gave  his  name  to  the  authorities  as  Silas  Titus 
Comberback,  with  initials  corres])onding  to  his  own,  perhaps  in 
order  that  the  marks  on  his  clothes  might  not  raise  suspicion. 
"Being  at  a  loss  when  suddenly  asked  my  name,"  he  writes, 
"I  answered  Comberback  ;  and,  verily,  my  habits  were  so  little 
equestrian,  that  my  horse,  I  doubt  not,  was  of  that  opinion." 

Wayward,  S2ntcful  K. — Kenney,  the  dramatist,  who  married 
a  Frenchwoman  and  lived  for  some  years  at  Versailles.  Lamb 
visited  him  there  in  1822. 

"  Umoorthy  land,  to  liarbour  such  a  sweetness." 

I  have  not  been  able  as  yet  to  trace  this  quotation  to  its  .source. 

S.  T.  C. — Of  course,  Coleridge  again.  It  is  a  good  illus- 
tration of  Lamb's  fondness  for  puzzling  that  having  to  instance 
his  friend,  he  indicates  him  three  times  in  the  same  essay  by  a 
different  alias.  Coleridge's  constant  practice  of  enriching  his 
own  and  other's  books  with  these  inarginalia  is  well  known. 

NEW  YEAR'S  EVE.— P.  37. 

{London  Magazine,  January  1821.) 

It  was  probably  this  paper,  together  with  that  on  Witches 
and  other  Night  Fears,  which  so  shocked  the  moral  sense  of 
Southey,  and  led  to  his  lamenting  publicly,  in  the  pages  of  the 
Quarterly,  the  "al)sencc  of  a  sounder  religious  feeling"  in  the 
Essays  of  Elia.     The  melancholy  scepticism  of  its  strain  would 


NOTES.  385 

appear  to  liave  struck  others  at  the  time.  A  gi-aceful  and 
tenderly-remonstrative  copy  of  verses,  suggested  by  it,  appeared 
in  the  London  Alaxfazinc  for  August  1821,  signed  "  Olen.'" 
Lamb  noticed  them  in  a  letter  to  his  publisher  Mr.  Taylor,  of 
July  30.  ' '  You  will  do  me  injustice  if  you  do  not  convey  to  the 
writer  of  the  beautiful  lines,  which  I  here  return  you,  my  sense 
of  the  extreme  kindness  which  dictates  them.  Poor  Elia  (call 
him  EUia)  does  not  pretend  to  so  very  clear  revelations  of  a 
future  state  of  being  as  '  Olen  '  seems  gifted  with.  He 
stumbles  about  dark  mountains  at  best ;  but  he  knows  at  least 
how  to  be  thankful  for  this  life,  and  is  too  thankful,  indeed, 
for  certain  relationships  lent  him  here,  not  to  tremble  for  a 
possible  resumption  of  the  gift." 

Lamb  thinks  that  the  verses  may  have  been  by  James  Mont- 
gomery, who  was  on  the  staff  of  the  London,  but  I  have  not 
found  them  reprinted  in  any  collected  edition  of  Montgomery's 
poems. 

' '  /  saw  the  skirts  of  the  departing  Year. " 

From  the  first  strophe  of  Coleridge's  "  Ode  to  the  departing 
Year,"  as  originally  printed  in  the  Bristol  edition  of  his  poems 
in  1796.     He  afterwards  altered  the  line  to 

'•'  I  saw  the  train  of  the  departing  Year." 

"  Welcome  the  coming,  speed  the  parting  guest." 

From  Pope's  translation  of  the  Odyssey.     (Book  xv.  line  84.) 

Alice  W n. — According  to  Lamb's  "Key,"  for  Winterton. 

In  any  case  the  fictitious  name  by  which  Lamb  chose  to  indicate 
the  object  of  his  boyish  attachment,  whose  form  and  features  he 
loved  to  dwell  on  in  his  early  sonnets,  Rosamund  Gray,  and 
afterwards  in  his  essays.     We  shall  meet  her  again  later  on. 

'■'  Sweet  assurance  of  a  look." — From  Lamb's  favourite  Elegy 
on  Philip  Sidney,  by  Matthew  Roydon. 

From  ivhat  have  I  not  fallen,  if  the  child  I  remember  v:as 
indeed  myself. — The  best  commentary  on  this  passage  is  that 
supplied  by  Lamb's  beautiful  sonnet,  written  as  far  back  as 
1795:— 

' '  We  were  two  pretty  babes  ;  the  youngest  she, 
The  youngest,  and  the  loveliest  far  (I  ween) 
And  Innocence  her  name :  the  time  has  been 
We  two  did  love  each  other's  company ; 
Time  was,  we  two  had  wept  to  have  been  apart. 
But  when,  by  show  of  seeming  good  beguiled, 
I  left  the  garb  and  manners  of  a  child, 
And  my  first  love  for  man's  society, 
2  c 


386  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Defiling  with  the  world  my  virgin  heart — 
My  loved  companion  dropt  a  tear,  and  fled, 
And  hid  in  deepest  shades  her  awful  head. 
Beloved !  who  shall  tell  me,  where  thou  art  ? 
In  what  delicious  Eden  to  he  found? 
That  I  may  seek  thee,  the  wide  world  around." 


MRS.   BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST.— P.  41. 

{London  Mmjazlnc,  February  1821.) 

Tliere  is  probably  no  evidence  existing  as  to  the  original  of 
Mrs.  Piattle.  Several  of  Lamb's  commentators  have  endeavoured 
to  prove  her  identity  with  Mary  Field,  Lamb's  grandmother,  so 
long  resident  with  the  Plunier  family  ;  the  sole  fact  common  to 
them  being  that  Lamb  represents  Mrs.  Battle  (in  the  essay  on 
Blakesmoor)  as  having  died  at  Blakcsware,  where  also  Mrs.  Field 
ended  her  days.  But  any  one  who  will  read,  after  the  present 
essay,  Lamb's  indisputably  genuine  and  serious  verses  on  Mrs. 
Field's  death  ( The  Grandame)  will  feel  that  to  have  transformed 
her  into  this  "gentlewoman  born"  ^nth  the  fine  "  last  century 
countenance,"  would  have  been  little  short  of  a  mauvaise  plai- 
santerie,  of  which  Lamb  was  not  likely  to  have  been  guilty. 

3fr.  Boivlcs. — William  Lisle  Bowles  brought  out  his  edition 
of  Pope  in  1807. 

Bridget  Elia. — The  name  by  which  Lamb  always  indicates  his 
sister  in  this  series  of  essays. 


A  CHAPTEll  ON  EARS.— P.  52. 
(London  Magazine,  March  1S21.) 

Lamb's  indifference  to  music  is  one  of  the  best-known  features 
of  his  personality.  Compare  the  admirably  humorous  verses, 
"Free  Thoughts  on  several  Eminent  Composers,"  beginning — 

"  Some  cry  up  Haydn,  some  Mozart, 
Just  as  the  whim  bites  ;  for  my  part 
I  do  not  care  a  farthing  candle 
For  either  of  them,  or  for  Handel, — 
Cannot  a  man  live  free  and  easy 
Without  admiring  Pergolesi  ? 
Or  through  the  world  with  comfort  go 
That  never  heard  of  Dr.  Blow  ?" 
My  friend  A.'s.  —  'Dowhtlaas  Lamb's  friend,  William  Ayrton, 
the  well-known  musical  critic  of  that  day  (1777-1858). 


NOTES.  387 

Party  in  aimrlour,  c<c.— From  a  stanza  in  the  original  draft 
of  Wordsworth's  Fdcr  Bell.  The  stanza  was  omitted  in  all 
editions  of  the  poem  after  the  first  (1819). 

2ry  good  CatlioUc  friend  Nov . — Vincent  Novello,  the 

well-known  organist  and  composer,  father  of  Mde.  Clara  Novello 
and  Mrs.  Cowden  Clarke  (1781-1861). 

rajyt  above  earth. 

And  2)ossess  joys  not  pi'omised  at  my  birth. 
— "  As  I  thus  sat,  these  and  other  sights  had  .so  fully  possessed 
my  soul  with  content  that  I  thonglit,  as  the  poet  has  happily 
expressed  it, — 

I  was  for  that  time  lifted  above  earth  ; 
And  possessed  joys  not  promised  at  my  birth." 
— Walton's  Complete  Angler,  Part  I.  chap.  4. 


ALL  FOOL'S  DAY.— P.  58. 
{London  Magazine,  April  1S21.) 

The  crazy  old  church  clock, 
And  the  bewildered  chimes. 
— Wordsworth,  "  The  Fountain  :  a  Conversation." 

Ha  I  honest  ^.—According  to  Lamb's  "  Key,"  one  Ramsay, 
who  kept  the  "London  Library"  in  Liidgate  Street. 

Granmlle  S. — Granville  Sharp,  the  abolitionist,  died  in  1813. 

King  Pandion,  he  is  dead  ; 

All  thy  friends  are  lajpt  in  lead. 
— From  the  verses  on  a  Nightingale,  beginning— 

"As  it  fell  upon  a  day," 
formerly  ascribed  to  Shakspeare,  but  now  known  to  be  written 
by  Richard  Barnfield. 

A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.— P.  62. 

(London  Magazine,  April  1821.) 

"  Boreas  and  Cesias  and  Argestcs  loud." 

—Milton,  Paradise  Lost,  x.  699. 

sands,  ignoble  things, 

Droptfrom  the  ruined  sides  of  kings. 

—From  "Lines   on   the  Tombs  in  Westminster  Abbey,"  by 

Francis  Beaumont. 


388  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Hoio  reverend  is  the  view  of  these  hushed  heads, 
Looking  traiiquillity  ! 

— A  good  example  of  Lamb's  habit  of  constnictiiig  a  quotation 
out  of  his  general  recollection  of  a  passage.  The  lines  lu;  liad 
in  his  mind  are  from  Congi-eve's  Mourning  Bride,  Act  II.  Scene 
1  :— 

' '  How  reverend  is  the  face  of  this  tall  pile, 
Whose  aucieut  pillars  rear  their  marble  heads 
To  bear  aloft  its  arched  and  ponderous  roof, 
By  its  own  weight  made  stedfast  and  immoveable, 
Looking  tranquil)  ity. ' ' 

The  ivritings  of  John  Woolman. — "A  journal  of  the  life,  gospel 
labours,  and  Christian  experiences  of  that  faithful  minister  of 
Jesus  Christ,  John  Woolman,  late  of  Mount  Holly,  in  the  Pro- 
vince of  Jersey,  North  America  "  (1720-1772).  Woolman  was  an 
American  Quaker  of  humble  origin,  an  "illiterate  tailor,"  one 
of  the  first  who  had  "  misgivings  about  the  institution  of 
slavery. "  Crabb  Robinson,  to  whom  Lamb  introduced  the  book, 
becomes  rapturous  over  it.  ' '  His  religion  is  love  ;  his  whole 
existence  and  all  his  passions  were  love  !" 

" Fo7'ty  feeding  like  one." 

— From  Wordsworth's  verses,  WTitten  in  March  1801,  beginning 

"  The  cock  is  crowing. 
The  stream  is  flowing." 

I  have  noted  elsewhere  Lamb's  strong  native  sympathy  with 
the  Quaker  spirit  and  Quaker  manners  and  customs,  a  sympathy 
so  marked  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  it  was  not  inherited,  and 
that  on  one  or  other  side  of  his  parentage  he  had  not  relations 
with  the  Society  of  Friends.  His  pictm-e  of  the  Quakerism  of 
sixty  years  ago  is  of  almost  historical  value,  so  great  are  the 
changes  that  have  since  divided  the  Society  against  itself. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER— P.  67. 

(London  Magazine,  May  1S21.) 

My  friend  if.— Thomas  Manning,  the  mathematician  and  ex- 
plorer, whose  acquaintance  Lamb  made  early  in  life  at  Cambridge. 

King  Basilius. — See  Sidney's  Arcadia,  Book  i.  (vol.  ii.  p.  17 
of  the  edition  of  1725.) 

Even  a  child,  that  " phii/thingfor  an  hour." — One  of  Lamb's 
(pTotations  from  himself  The  phrase  occurs  in  a  charming  poem, 
of  three  stanzas,  in  the  Poetry  fur  Children: — 


NOTES.  389 

'  A  child's  a  plaything  for  an  hour  ; 

Its  pretty  tricks  we  try 
For  tliat  or  lor  a  longer  space  ; 
Tlien  tire  and  lay  it  by. 

'  But  I  knew  one  that  to  itself 
All  seasons  could  control  ; 
That  would  have  mocked  the  sense  of  pain 
Out  of  a  grieved  soul. 

'  Thou  straggler  into  loving  arms, 

Young  climber  up  of  knees, 
When  I  forget  thy  thousand  ways, 
Then  life  and  all  shall  cease." 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.— P.  76. 

(Loudon  Magaiiiic,  August  ISiil.) 

Standing  on  cnrfh,  not  rapt  above  the  sky. — Quoted,  not  with 
perfect  accuracy,  from  Paradise  Lost,  vii.  23. 

John  Bunch.  —  "The  Life  of  John  Buncle,  Esq.  ;  containing 
various  observations  and  reflections,  made  in  several  parts  of  the 
world,  and  many  extraordinary  relations."  By  Thomas  Amory 
(1756-66).  Amory  was  a  staunch  Unitarian,  an  earnest  moralist, 
a  humorist,  and  eccentric  to  the  verge  of  insanity— four  quali- 
fications which  would  appeal  irresistibly  to  Lamb's  sympathies. 

A  cjracefitl  figure,  after  Leonardo  da  Vinci. — This  print,  a 
present  to  Lamb  from  Crabb  Robinson  in  1816,  was  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci's  Vierge  aux  Rochers.  It  was  a  special  favourite  with 
Charles  and  Mary,  and  is  the  subject  of  some  verses  by  Charles. 

B icouM  have  been  more  in  keeping  if  he  had  ahidcd  by 

the  faith  of  his  forefathers. — Braham,  the  singer.  In  a  letter  to 
Manning,  Lamb  describes  him  as  a  compound  of  the  ' '  Jew,  the 
gentleman,  and  the  angel." 

"  To  sit  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his p)ulse." 
— Slightly  altered  from  Paradise  Regained,  Book  ii.  line  278. 

I  was  travelling  in  a  stage-coach  with  three  male  Quakers. — 
This  adventure  happened  not  to  Lamb,  but  to  Sir  Anthon}' 
Carlisle,  the  surgeon,  from  whom  Lamb  had  the  anecdote. 

WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.— P.  85. 
(London  Magazine,  October  1821.) 

Headless  bear,  black  man,  or  ajK. — From  "The  Author's 
Abstract  of  Melancholj'', "  prefixed  to  Burton's  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy. 


390  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Dear  little  T.  H. — Thornton  Hunt,  Loif^li  Hunt's  oldest  boy. 
This  passage  is  interesting  as  liaving  provoked  Southey's  violent 
attack  on  Leigh  Hunt  and  his  principles,  in  the  Quarterly  Re- 
view for  January  1823. 

' '  • names  whose  sense  wc  see  not 

Fray  us  with  things  that  be  not." 
— From  Spenser's  Epithalamitcm,  line  343. 

/  have  formerly  travelled  among  the  Westmoreland  Fells. — 
See  Lamb's  letter  to  Manning,  in  1802,  describing  his  and  Mary's 
visit  to  Coleridge  at  Keswick.  "We  got  in  in  the  evening, 
travelling  in  a  post-chaise  from  Penrith,  in  the  midst  of  a  gor- 
geous sunset,  which  transmuted  all  the  mountains  into  colours. 
We  thought  we  had  got  into  Fairyland.  .  .  .  Such  an  impres- 
sion I  never  received  from  olijccts  of  sight  before,  nor  do  I  sup- 
pose that  I  can  ever  again." 


VALENTINE'S  DAY.— P.  93. 
(Leigh  Hunt's  Indicator,  February  14,  1821.) 

'■'Brushed  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  tvings." 
— Paradise  Lost,  i.  768. 

"Gives  a  very  echo  to  the  throne  where  hope  is  seated." — 
Another  of  Lamb's  adaptations  of  Shakspeare.  The  original  is 
in  Twelfth  Night  (Act  II.  Sc.  4.) 

A  little  later  on  will  be  noticed  a  similar  free-and-easy  use 
of  a  passage  from  Wordsworth. 

E.  B. — Edward  Francis  Burney  (1760-1848),  a  portrait- 
painter,  and  book-illustrator  on  a  large  scale.  He  was  a  cousin 
of  Mde.  D'Arblay,  antl  not  a  half-brother  as  stated  in  Lamb's 
"Key."  His  name  may  be  seen  "at  the  bottom  of  many  a 
well-executed  vignette  in  the  way  of  his  profession "  in  the 
periodicals  of  his  day.  He  illustrated  for  Harrison,  tlie  World, 
Tatlcr,  Guardian,  Adventurer,  etc. ,  besides  the  Arabian  Nights, 
and  novels  of  Richardson  and  Smollett. 


MY  RELATIONS.— P.  96. 

{London  Magazine,  June  1821.) 

In  these  two  successive  essays,  and  in  that  on  the  Benchers 
of  the  Inner  Tem.ple,  Lamb  draws  portraits  of  singirlar  interest 
to  us,  of  his  father,  aunt,  brother,  and  sister — all  his  near  re- 
lations with  one  exception.     The  mother's  name  never  occurs 


NOTES.  391 

in  letter  or  piiblislied  writing  after  the  first  liitterness  of  the 
calamity  of  September  1796  had  passed  away.  This  was  doubt- 
less out  of  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  his  sister.  Very 
noticeable  is  the  frankness  with  which  he  describes  the  less 
agreeable  side  of  the  character  of  his  brother  John,  who  was 
still  living,  and  apparently  on  quite  friendly  terms  with  Charles 
and  Mary. 

/  had  an  aimt. — A  sister  of  John  Lamb  the  elder,  who 
generally  lived  with  the  family,  and  contributed  sometliing  to 
the  common  income.  After  the  death  of  the  mother,  a  lady  of 
comfortable  means,  a  relative  of  the  family,  ofl'ered  her  a  home, 
but  the  arrangement  did  not  succeed,  and  the  aunt  returned  to 
die  among  her  own  people.  Charles  writes,  just  before  her 
death  in  February  1797 — "My  poor  old  aunt,  who  was  the 
kindest  creature  to  me  when  I  was  at  scliool,  and  used  to  bring 
me  good  things  ;  when  I,  schoolboy-like,  used  to  be  ashamed 
to  see  her  come,  and  open  her  apron,  and  bring  out  her  basin 
with  some  nice  thing  which  she  had  saved  for  me, — the  good 
old  creature  is  now  dying.  She  says,  poor  thing,  she  is  glad 
she  is  come  home  to  die  with  me.  I  was  always  her  favourite." 
See  also  the  lines  "written  on  the  day  of  my  aunt's  funeral" 
in  the  little  voluuie  of  Blank  Verse,  by  Charles  Lloyd  and 
Charles  Lamb,  published  in  1798. 

Brother  or  sister,  I  never  had  any  to  know  them.  —  In  this 
and  the  next  sentence  is  a  curious  blending  of  fact  and  fiction. 
Besides  John  and  Mary,  four  other  children  had  been  born  to 
John  and  Elizabeth  Lamb  iu  the  Temple,  between  the  years 
1762  and  1775,  but  had  apparently  not  survived  their  infancy. 
Two  daughters  had  been  christened  Elizabeth,  one  in  1762  and 
another  after  her  death,  in  1768.  John  and  Mary  Lamb  are 
now  to  be  described  as  cousins,  under  the  names  of  James  and 
Bridget  Elia.  Charles  Lamb  actually  had  relations,  in  that 
degree,  living  in  Hertfordshire,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Wheat- 
hampstead. 

James  is  an  inexplicable  cousin.  — The  mixture  of  the  man  of 
the  world,  dilettante,  and  sentimentalist — not  an  infrequent 
combination — is  here  described  with  graphic  power.  All  tliat 
we  know  of  Jolin  Lamb,  the  "broad,  burly,  jovial,"  living  liis 
bachelor-life  in  chambers  at  the  old  Sea-House,  is  su})ported  and 
confirmed  by  this  passage.  Touching  his  extreme  sensibility 
to  the  physical  sufferings  of  animals,  there  is  a  letter  of  Charles 
to  Crabb  Robinson  of  the  year  1810,  which  is  worth  noting. 
"My  brother,  whom  you  have  met  at  my  rooms  (a  plump, 
good-looking  man  of  seven-and-forty),  has  written  a  book  about 
humanity,    which  I  transmit   to   you   herewith.     Wilson  the 


392  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

}iiil)lisli('r  li;is  jmt  it  into  liiw  head  tliat  you  can  !j,ct  it  reviewed 
for  liim.  I  daresay  it  is  not  in  the  scope  of  your  review  ;  but 
if  you  could  put  it  into  any  likely  train,  he  would  rejoice.  For, 
alas  !  our  boasted  humanity  partakes  of  vanity.  As  it  is,  he 
teases  me  to  death  with  choosing  to  suppose  that  I  could  get  it 
into  all  the  Reviews  at  a  moment's  notice.  I  !  !  ! — who  have 
been  set  up  as  a  mark  for  them  to  throw  at,  and  would  willingly 
consign  them  all  to  Megrera's  snaky  locks.  But  here's  the 
book,  and  don't  show  it  to  Mrs.  Collier,  for  I  remember  she 
makes  excellent  ccl  soup,  and  the  leading  points  of  the  book  are 
directed  against  that  very  process." 

Through  the  green  iilains  of  pleasant  Hertfordshire. 
— From  an  early  sonnet  of  Lamb's. 


MACKERY  END,   IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.— P.  103. 
{London  Magazine,  July  1821.) 

Bridget  Elia. — Mary  Lamb.  The  lives  of  the  brother  and 
sister  are  so  bound  together,  that  the  illustrations  of  their 
joint  life  alforded  by  this  essay,  and  that  on  Old  China,  are  of 
singular  interest.  They  show  us  the  brighter  and  happier 
intervals  of  that  life,  without  which  indeed  it  could  hardly  have 
been  borne  for  those  eight-and-thirty  years.  In  1805,  during 
one  of  Mary  Lamb's  periodical  attacks  of  mania,  and  conse([uent 
absences  from  home,  Charles  writes — "  I  am  a  fool  bereft  of  her 
co-operation.  I  am  used  to  look  up  to  her  in  the  least  and 
biggest  perplexities.  To  say  all  that  I  find  her  would  be  more 
than,  I  think,  anybody  could  possibly  understand.  She  is 
older,  wiser,  and  better  than  I  am  ;  and  all  my  wi'ctched  imper- 
fections I  cover  to  myself  by  thinking  on  her  goodness."  Com- 
pare also  the  sonnet  written  by  Charles,  in  one  of  his  "lucid 
intervals  "  when  himself  in  confinement,  in  1796,  ending  with 
the  words — 

" the  mighty  debt  of  love  I  owe, 

Mary,  to  thee,  my  sister  and  my  friend." 

The  oldest  thing  I  remevibcr  is  Maelcery  Eiid,  or  Maclcarcl 
End. — The  place,  now  further  contracted  into  "  Mackrye  P-nd," 
is  a])out  a  mile  and  a  half  from  Wheathampstead,  on  the  Luton 
Branch  of  the  Great  Northern  Railway.  On  leaving  the  Wlieat- 
hamj)stead  Station,  the  traveller  must  follow  the  road  which 
runs  along  the  valley  towards  Luton,  nearly  parallel  with  the 
railway  for  about  a  mile,  to  a  grouji  of  houses  near  the  "Cherry 
Trees."  At  this  point,  he  will  turn  short  to  the  right,  and  then, 
take  the  first  turning  on  his  left,  along  the  edge  of  a  pretty 


NOTES.  393 

little  wood.  lie  will  soon  see  the  venerable  old  .laeoliean  mansion, 
properly  called  Mackrye  End,  and  close  to  it  a  whitish  I'arni- 
hoiise,  which  is  the  one  occupied  by  Lamb's  relatives,  the  Glad- 
mans,  at  the  time  of  the  pilgrimage  recorded  in  this  essay. 
The  present  wi'iter  has  visited  the  sjaot,  also  in  the  "heart  of 
June,"  and  bears  the  pleasautest  testimony  to  its  rural  beauty 
and  seclusion.  The  farmhouse  has  had  an  imjiortant  addition 
to  it  since  Lamb's  day,  but  a  large  portion  of  the  building  is 
evidently  still  the  same  as  when  the  "  image  of  welcome"  came 
forth  from  it  to  greet  the  brother  and  sister.  ]\Tay  I,  without 
presumption,  call  attention  to  the  almost  unique  beauty  of  this 

"  •'     ■         Jjut  thou  that  didst  appear  so  fair 

To  fond  imagination. 

— Wordsworth's  "Yarrow  Visited." 

B.  F. — Barron  Field,  who  accompanied  Lamb  and  his  sister 
ou  this  expedition.     See  the  essay  on  Distant  CorresiMudcnts. 

Compare  a  letter  of  Lamb  to  Manning  in  May  1819.  "  How 
are  my  cousins,  the  Gladmans  of  Wheathampstead,  and  farmer 
Bruton  ?  Mrs.  Bruton  is  a  glorious  woman.  'Hail,  Mackery 
End.'  This  is  a  fragment  of  a  blank  verse  poem  which  I  once 
meditated,  but  got  no  further." 

MY  FIKST  PLAY.— r.  108. 

{London  Magazine,  December  1821.) 
The  only  landed  jn'ojKrty  I  could  ever  call  my  own. — Mrs. 
Procter  informs  me  that  a  relative  of  Lamb's  did  actually  be- 
queath to  him  a  small  "landed  estate  " — probably  no  more  than 
a  single  field — producing  a  pound  or  two  of  rent,  and  that  Lamb 
was  fond  of  referring  to  the  circumstance,  and  declaring  that  it 
had  revolutionised  his  views  of  Property. 

The  first  appearance  to  «tc  of  Mrs.  Sidd.ons  in  Isabella. — One 
of  Lamb's  earliest,  perhaps  his  first  sonnet,  was  inspired  by 
this  great  actress.  It  was  published,  with  some  of  Coleridge's, 
in  the  columns  of  the  Morning  Chronicle  in  1794. 

As  when  a  child,  on  some  long  winter's  night 
AHrighted  clinging  to  its  grandam's  knees 
With  eager  wondering  and  i)erturbed  delight 
Listens  strange  tales  of  fearful  dark  decrees 
Muttered  to  wretch  by  necromantic  sjiell ; 
Or  of  those  hags,  who  at  the  witching  time 
Of  murky  midnight  ride  the  air  sublime. 
And  mingle  foul  embrace  with  fiends  of  Hell  : 
Cold  Horror  drinks  its  blood  !  Anon  the  tear 
More  gentle  starts,  to  hear  the  beldame  tell 


3Di  THE    ESSAYS   OF   ELIA. 

Of  pretty  baljes  that  loved  t-ach  other  dear, 
Murdered  by  cruel  Uncle's  mandate  fell : 
Even  such  tlie  shivering  joys  thy  tones  impart, 
Even  so  thou,  Siddons,  meltest  my  sad  heart ! 

MODERN  GALLANTRY.— P.  113. 
(London,  Magazine,  November  1822). 
Joseph  Paicc,  of  Bread  Street  Hill,  merchant. — Sonio  very 
interesting  particulars  of  tlie  life  and  character  of  this  generous 
and  self- sacrificing  person,  in  whom  most  unquestionably 
"manners  were  not  idle,"  will  be  found  in  t\m  Athouvum  iov 
the  year  1841  (pp.  366  and  387),  contributed  by  the  late  Miss 
Anne  Manning.  Thomas  Edwards,  author  of  Canons  of  Criti- 
cism, a  very  acute  commentary  upon  Warburton's  emendations 
of  Shakspcare,  was  his  uncle.  Edwards  was  a  mediocre  poet, 
but  his  sonnets  are  carefully  constructed  on  the  Miltonic  scheme, 
which  perhaps  accounts  for  Lamb's  exaggerated  epithet.  The 
sonnet  may  be  given  here  as  at  least  a  curiosity  : — 

To  Mil.  J.  Paice. 
Josejih,  the  woi'thy  son  of  worthy  sire, 
Who  well  repay'st  thy  pious  parents'  care 
To  train  thee  in  the  ways  of  Virtue  fair, 
And  early  with  the  Love  of  Truth  inspire. 
What  fartlier  can  my  closing  eyes  desire 
To  see,  but  that  by  wedlock  thou  repair 
The  waste  of  death  ;  and  raise  a  virtuous  heir 
To  build  our  House,  e'er  I  in  peace  retire  ? 
Youth  is  the  time  for  Love  :  Then  choose  a  wife, 
With  prudence  choose  ;  'tis  Nature's  genuine  voice  ; 
And  what  she  truly  dictates  must  be  good  ; 
Neglected  once  that  prime,  our  remnant  life 
Is  soured,  or  saddened,  by  an  ill-timed  choice, 
Or  lonely,  dull,  and  friendless  solitude. 

THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.— 

P.  118. 

(London  Magazine,  September  1S21.) 

Charles  Lamb  was  born  on  the  10th  of  February  1775,  in 
Crown  Oltice  Row,  Temple,  where  Samuel  Salt,  a  Bencher  of 
the  Inn,  owned  two  sets  of  chambers.  This  was  Lamb's  home 
for  the  seven  years  preceding  his  admission  into  Christ's  Hos- 
pital in  1782,  and  afterwards,  in  holiday  seasons,  till  he  left 
school  in  1789,  and  later,  at  least  till  Salt's  death  in  1792.  A 
recent  editor  of  Lamb's  works  has  stated  that,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Salt,  almost  all  the  names  of  Benchers  given  in  this  essay 


NOTES.  395 

are  "  [nirely  iniaj:,fi]iai-y."  The.  reverse  of  this  is  the  fact.  All 
the  names  here  celetn-ated  arc  to  be  found  in  the  records  of  the 
honourable  society. 

TJicrc  when  they  came,  ivhercas  those  brichj  toivers, 

— Spenser's  Prothalamion,  stanza  viii. 

Of  building  strong,  albeit  of  Pajjcr  hight. 

— Paper  Buildings,  facing  King's  Bench  Walk  in  the  Temple. 
The  line  is  doirbtless  improvised  for  the  occasion. 

That  fine  Elizabethan  hall. — The  hall  of  the  Middle  Temple. 
The  fountain  still  plays,  but  "cpiantum  mutatus." 

Ah  !  yet  doth  beauty  like  a  dial  hand. 
— Shakspeare's  Sonnet,  No.  104. 

"  Carved  it  out  quaintly  in  the  sun.'' 
— ///.  Henry  VI.,  ii.  5. 

Tlie  rogidsh  eye  of  J — II. — Jekyll,  tin;  Master  in  Chancery. 
The  wit,  and  friend  of  wits,  among  the  old  Benchers — the  Sir 
George  Rose  of  his  day.     Called  to  the  Bench  1805  ;  died  1837. 

Thomas  Coventry,  nephew  of  William,  fifth  Earl  of  Coventry ; 
of  North  Cray  Place,  Bexley,  Kent. — Called  to  the  Bench  in 
1766  ;  died  in  1797. 

Samuel  >S'«.Z<.— Called  to  the  Bench  1782  ;  died  in  1792.  The 
Bencher  in  whom  Lamb  had  the  most  peculiar  interest.  John 
Lamb,  the  father,  was  in  the  service  of  Salt  for  some  live  and 
forty  years — he  acting  as  clerk  and  confidential  servant,  and 
his  wife  as  housekeeper.  As  we  have  seen,  ilr.  Salt  occupied 
two  sets  of  chambers  in  Crown  Office  Row,  forming  a  substan- 
tial house.  He  had  two  indoor  servants,  besides  John  and 
Elizabeth  Lamb,  and  kept  his  carriage.  Salt  died  in  1792. 
By  his  will,  dated  1786,  he  gives  "To  my  servant,  John  Lamb, 
who  has  lived  with  me  near  forty  years, "  £500  South  Sea  stock  ; 
and  "to  Mrs.  Lamb  £100  in  money,  well  deserved  for  her  care 
and  attention  during  my  illness."  By  a  codicil,  dated  Decem- 
ber 20,  1787,  his  executors  are  directed  to  employ  John  Lamb 
to  receive  the  testator's  "Exchequer  annuities  of  £210  and  £14 
during  their  term,  and  to  pay  him  £10  a-year  for  his  trouble  so 
long  as  he  shall  receive  them,"  a  delicate  and  ingenious  way  of 
retaining  John  Lamb  in  his  service,  as  it  were,  after  his  own 
decease.  By  a  later  codicil,  he  gives  another  hundred  pounds  to 
Mrs.  Lamb.  These  benefactions,  and  not  the  small  pension 
erroneously  stated,  on  the  authority  of  Talfourd,  in  my  memoir 
of  Lamb,  foi'med  the  provision  made  by  Salt  for  his  faithful  pair 
of  attendants.     The  appointment  of  Charles  to  the  clerkship 


396  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

ill  the  India  House  in  1792  must  have  been  the  Uistof  Uu'  many 
kind  acts  of  Samuel  Salt  to  the  family.  Where  the  Laml> 
family  moved  to  after  Salt's  death  in  1792,  and  how  they  strug- 
gled on  between  that  date  and  the  fatal  year  1796,  is  one  of  the 
unsettled  points  of  Lamb's  history.  Maiy  Lamb's  skill  with 
her  needle  was  probably  used  as  a  means  of  increasing  the 
common  income.  Crabb  Robinson  tells  us  of  an  article  on 
needlework  contributed  by  her  some  years  later  to  one  of  the 
magazines. 

The  unfortunate  Miss  Blandy.  -  The  heroine  of  a  cause  ceUbre 
in  the  year  1752.  Her  whole  story  ^vill  be  found,  dprojms  of 
the  town  of  Henley,  in  Mr.  Leslie's  charming  book  on  the 
Thames,  entitled  Our  River.  Miss  Blandy,  the  daughter  of 
an  attorney  at  Henley,  with  good  expectations  from  her  father, 
attracted  the  attention  of  an  adventurer,  a  certain  Captain 
Cranstoun.  The  father  disapproved  of  the  intimacy,  and  the 
Captain  entrusted  Miss  Blandy  with  a  certain  powder  which  she 
administered  to  her  father  with  a  fatal  result.  Her  defence  was 
that  she  believed  the  powder  to  be  of  the  nature  of  a  love-philtre, 
which  would  have  the  elfect  of  making  her  father  well-aliected 
towards  her  lover.  The  defence  was  not  successful,  and  Miss 
Blandy  was  found  guilty  of  murder,  and  executed  at  Oxfortl  in 
April  1752. 

Susan  P . — Susannah  Pierson,  sister  of  Salt's  brother- 

Benchei',  Peter  Pierson,  mentioned  in  this  essay,  and  one  of  Salt's 
executors.  By  his  second  codicil.  Salt  bequeaths  her,  as  a  mark 
of  regard,  £500  ;  his  silver  inkstand  ;  and  the  "works  of  Pope, 
Swift,  Shakspeare,  Addison,  and  Steele  ;"  also  Sherlock's  Ser- 
mons (Sherlock  had  been  Master  of  the  Temple),  and  any  other 
books  she  likes  to  choose  out  of  his  library,  hojiing  that,  ' '  by 
reading  and  reflection,"  they  will  "make  her  life  more  com- 
fortable." How  oddly  touching  this  bequest  seems  to  us,  in 
the  light  thrown  on  it  by  Lamb's  account  of  the  relation  between 
Salt  and  his  friend's  sister !  What  a  pleasant  glimpse,  again, 
is  here  afforded  of  the  "  spacious  closet  of  good  old  English 
reading"  into  which  Charles  and  Mary  were  "tumbled,"  as  he 
told  us,  at  an  eai'ly  age,  when  they  "  browsed  at  will  upon  that 
fair  and  wholesome  pasturage." 

T  hieiu  tlds  Lovel.  — Lamb's  father,  John  Lamb.  The  sketch 
of  him  given  in  Mr.  Procter's  memoir  of  Charles,  taken  doubt- 
less from  the  portrait  here  mentioned,  confirms  the  statement 
of  a  general  resemblance  to  Garrick.  Mrs.  Arthur  Tween,  a 
daughter  of  Randal  Norris,  has  in  her  possession  a  medallion 
portrait  of  Samuel  Salt,  executed  in  plaster  of  Paris  by  John 
Lamb.  He  published  a  collection  of  his  verses,  "  Poetical  Pieces 
on  several  occasions,"  in  a  rough  pamphlet  of  quarto  size.     A 


NOTES.  397 

few  lines  from  the  (ratlier  doggerel)  verses  describing  the  life  of 
a  footman  in  the  last  century  (doubtless  reflecting  his  own 
experiences  of  the  time  when  he  wore  "  the  smart  new  livery  ") 
may  be  given  as  a  sample  of  liis  efibrts  in  the  manner  of  "  Swift 
and  Prior."  The  footman  has  just  been  sent  on  an  errand  to 
inipiiro  after  the  health  of  a  friend  of  his  mistress  who  has  lost 
her  monkey  : — 

"  Then  up  she  mounts — down  I  descend, 

To  shake  hands  with  particular  friend  ; 

And  there  I  do  some  brothers  meet, 

And  we  each  other  kindly  gi-eet ; 

Then  cards  they  bring  and  criblmge-board, 

And  I  7nust  play  upon  their  word, 

Altho'  I  tell  them  I  am  sent 

To  know  how  th'  night  a  lady  spent. 

'  Pho  !  make  excuse,  and  have  one  bout. 

And  say  the  lady  was  gone  out ; ' 

Th'  advice  I  take,  sit  down  and  say, 

'  What  is  the  sum  for  which  we  play  ? ' 

'  I  care  not  much, '  another  cries, 

'  But  let  it  be  for  Wets  and  Drys.' " 

"A  remnant  most  forlorn  of  what  he  was." — One  of  Lamb's 
quotations  from  himself.  It  occurs  in  the  lines  (February  1797) 
"  written  on  the  day  of  my  aunt's  funeral :  " — 

"  One  parent  yet  is  left, — a  wretched  thing, 
A  sad  survivor  of  his  buried  wife, 
A  palsy-smitten,  childish,  old,  old  man, 
A  semblance  most  forlorn  of  what  he  was, 
A  merry  cheerful  man." 

John  Lamb  lingered  till  April  1799. 

Peter  Piersori.— Called  to  the  Bench  1800,  died  1808.  It  will 
be  seen  that  Salt  and  Pierson,  though  friends  and  contemporaries 
at  the  Bar,  were  not  so  as  Benchers.  Salt  had  been  some  years 
dead  when  his  friend  was  called  to  the  Bench. 

Daincs  Barrington.—Th.e  antiquary,  naturalist,  and  corre- 
spondent of  White  of  Selborne.  Called  to  the  Bench  in  1777, 
died  1800. 

Thomas  Barton. — Called  to  the  Bench  1775,  died  1791. 

John  Head.— Called  to  the  Bench  1792,  died  in  1804. 

Twopenny. — There  never  was  a  Bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple 
of  this  name.  The  gentleman  here  intended,  Mr.  Richard 
Twopeny,  was  a  stockbroker,  a  member  of  the  Kentish  family 
of  that  name,  who,  being  a  bachelor,  lived  in  chambers  in  the 
Temple.     On  his  retirement  from  business  he  resided  at  West 


398  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Mailing  ill  Kent,  and  died  in  1809,  at  the  age  of  eighty-two. 
Mr.  Edward  Twopeuy  of  Woodstock,  Sittingbourne,  a  great- 
nephew  of  this  gentleman,  remembers  him  well,  and  informs 
me  that  he  was,  as  Lamb  describes  him,  remarkably  thin. 
Lamb  evidently  recalled  him  as  a  familiar  figure  in  the  Temple 
in  his  own  childish  days,  and  supposed  him  to  have  been  a 
member  of  the  Bar.  Mr.  Twopeny  held  the  important  position 
of  stockbroker  to  the  13ank  of  England. 

John  JVharry.—CaRed.  to  the  Bench  1801,  died  in  1812. 

Pdchard  JacZ-so??.  — Called  to  the  Bench  1770,  died  1787. 
This  gentleman  was  M.  P.  for  New  Romney  and  a  member  of 
Lord  Shelburne's  Government  in  1782.  From  his  mde  reading 
and  extraordinary  memory  he  was  known,  beyond  the  circle  of 
his  brother-Benchers,  as  "the  omniscient."  Dr.  Johnson  (re- 
versing the  usual  order  of  his  translations)  styles  him  the  "all- 
knowing."  See  Boswell,  under  date  of  April  1776:  —  "No, 
Sir  ;  Mr.  Tlirale  is  to  go  by  my  advice  to  Mr.  Jackson  (the 
all-knowing),  and  get  from  him  a  plan  for  seeing  the  most  that 
can  be  seen  in  the  time  that  we  have  to  travel." 

James  Mingay. — Called  to  the  Bench  1785,  died  1812.  Mr. 
Mingay  was  an  eminent  King's  Counsel,  and  in  his  day  a 
powerful  rival  at  the  Bar,  of  Thomas  Eiskine — according  to  an 
obituary  notice  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  of  "  a  persuasive 
oratory,  infinite  wit,  and  most  excellent  fancy."  His  retort 
upon  Erskine,  about  the  knee-buckles,  goes  to  confirm  this 
verdict. 

Baron  Masercs. — Cursitor  Baron  of  the  Exchequer,  a  post 
which  he  tilled  for  fifty  years.  Born  1731,  died  May  1824. 
He  persevered  to  the  end  of  his  days  in  wearing  the  costume  of 
the  reign  in  which  he  was  born. 

R.  N. — Randal  Norris,  for  many  years  Sub  -  Treasurer  and 
Librarian  of  the  Inner  Temple.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was 
articled  to  Mr.  Walls  of  Paper  Buildings,  and  fi-om  that  time, 
for  more  than  half  a  century,  resided  in  the  Inner  Temple. 
His  wife  was  a  native  of  Witlibrd,  the  village  adjoining  Blakes- 
ware,  in  Hertfordshire,  and  a  friend  of  Mrs.  Field,  the  house- 
keeper, and  there  was  thus  a  double  tie  connecting  Randal 
Norris  with  Lamb's  family.  His  nam.e  appears  early  in  Charles's 
coiTespondence.  At  the  season  of  his  mother's  death,  he  tells 
Coleridge  that  Mr.  Norris  had  been  more  than  a  father  to  him, 
and  ]\Irs.  Norris  more  than  a  mother.  Mr.  Norris  died  in  the 
Temple  in  January  1827,  at  the  age  of  seventy-six,  and  was 
buried  iu  the  Temple  churchyard.  Talfourd  misdates  the  event 
by  a  j'-ear.  It  was  then  that  Charles  Lamb  wrote  to  Crabb 
Robinson — "  In  him  I  have  a  loss  the  world  cannot  make  up. 


NOTES.  399 

He  was  my  friend  and  my  father's  friend  all  tlie  life  I  can 
remember.  1  seem  to  liave  made  foolish  friendships  ever  since. 
Those  are  the  friendships  -which  outlive  a  second  generation. 
Old  as  I  am  waxing,  in  his  eyes  I  was  still  the  child  he  first 
knew  me.  To  the  last  he  called  me  Charley.  I  have  none  to 
call  me  Charley  now." 

GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.— P.  130. 
(London  Magazine,  November  1821.) 

C . — Coleridge. 

C.  r.  L. — Charles  Valentine  le  Grice,  Lamb's  schoolfellow 
at  Christ's  Hospital.     See  the  Essay  on  that  Institution. 

Smie  one  recalled  a  legend. — Leigh  Hunt  tells  the  story  in 
his  account  of  Christ's  Hospital: — "Our  dress  was  of  the 
coarsest  and  quaintest  kind,  but  was  respected  out  of  doors, 
and  is  so.  It  consisted  of  a  blue  drugget  gown,  or  body,  \\-ith 
ample  .skirts  to  it  ;  a  yellow  vest  underneath  in  winter  time  ; 
small  clotlies  of  Russia  duck  ;  worsted  yellow  stockings  ;  a 
leathern  girdle  ;  and  a  little  black  woreted  cap,  usually  earned 
in  the  hand.  I  believe  it  was  the  ordinary  dress  of  children  in 
humble  life  during  the  reign  of  the  Tudors.  "\Ve  used  to  flatter 
ourselves  that  it  was  taken  from  the  monks  ;  and  there  went  a 
monstrous  tradition,  that  at  one  period  it  consisted  of  blue 
velvet  with  silver  buttons.  It  was  said,  also,  that  during  the 
blissful  era  of  the  blue  velvet,  we  had  roast  mutton  for  supper  ; 
but  that  the  small  clothes  not  being  then  in  existence,  and  the 
mutton  suppers  too  luxurious,  the  eatables  Mere  given  up  for  the 
ineff"ables. " 

The  following  beautiful  passage  fi-om  the  Hccreaticms  and 
Studies  by  a  Country  Clergyman  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  (John 
Murray,  1882),  shows  that  others,  besides  Lamb,  had  thought 
the  main  thought  of  this  essay.  The  wi-iter  is  describing,  in 
1781,  the  drive  from  Hudderstield,  along  the  banks  of  the 
Calder  : — "  I  never  felt  anything  so  fine  :  I  shall  remember  it 
and  thank  God  for  it  as  long  as  I  live.  I  am  soiry  I  did  not 
think  to  say  grace  after  it.  Are  we  to  be  gi-ateful  for  nothing 
but  beef  and  pudding?  to  thank  God  for  life,  and  not  for 
happiness  ? " 

DREAM  CHILDREN  ;  A  REVERIE.— P.  137. 
{London  Magazine,  January  1822.) 

The  mood  in  which  Lamb  was  prompted  to  this  singularly 
affecting  confidence  was  clearly  due  to  a  family  bereavement,  a 
month  or  two  before  the  date  of  the  essay.     I  may  be  allowed 


400  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

to  re[>eat  words  of  my  own\,  used  elsewhere,  on  this  subject. 
"  Lamb's  ekler  brother  John  was  then  Litely  dead.  A  letter  to 
Wordsworth,  of  March  1822,  mentions  his  death  as  even  then 
recent,  and  speaks  of  a  certain  '  deadness  to  everything '  which 
the  writer  dates  from  that  event.  The  '  broad,  burly,  jovial ' 
John  Lamb  (so  Talfourd  describes  him)  had  lived  his  own  easy 
prosperous  life  up  to  this  time,  not  altogether  avoiding  social 
relations  with  liis  brother  and  sister,  but  evidently  absorbed  to 
the  last  in  his  o\\^l  interests  and  pleasures.  The  death  of  this 
lirother,  whollj^  unsympathetic  as  he  was  with  Charles,  ser%'ed 
to  bring  home  to  him  his  loneliness.  He  was  left  in  the  world 
with  but  one  near  relation,  and  that  one  too  often  removed  from 
him  for  months  at  a  time  by  the  saddest  of  afflictions.  No 
wonder  if  he  became  keenly  aware  of  his  solitude. "  The  emotion 
discernible  in  this  essay  is  absolutely  genuine  ;  the  blending  of 
fact  with  tiction  in  the  details  is  curiously  arbitrary. 

Tlieir  great  -  grandmother  Field.  —  Lamb's  gi-andmother, 
Marj'  Field,  for  more  than  fifty  years  housekeeper  at  Blakes- 
ware,  a  dower-house  of  the  Hertfordshire  family  of  Plumers,  a 
few  miles  from  Ware.  William  Plumer,  who  represented  his 
county  for  so  many  years  in  Parliament,  was  still  living,  and 
Lamb  may  have  disguised  the  whereabouts  of  the  ' '  great  house  " 
out  of  consideration  for  him.  Why  he  substituted  Norfolk  is 
only  matter  for  conjecture.  Perhaps  there  were  actually  scenes 
from  the  old  legend  of  the  Children  in  the  Wood  carved  upon 
a  chimneypiece  at  Blakesware  ;  possibly  there  was  some  old 
story  in  the  annals  of  the  Plumer  family  touching  the  myste- 
rious disappearance  of  two  children,  for  which  it  pleased  Lamb 
to  substitute  the  story  of  the  familiar  ballad.  His  grandmother, 
as  he  has  told  us  in  his  lines  The  Grandame,  was  deeply  versed 
"in  anecdote  domestic." 

Jfliich  after  wards  came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly 'puHed  down. 
— The  dismantling  of  the  Blakesware  house  had  therefore  begun, 
it  appears,  before  the  death  of  William  Plumer.  Cussans,  in 
his  History  of  Hertfordshire,  says  it  was  pulled  down  in  1822. 
Perhaps  the  complete  demolition  was  not  carried  out  till  after 
Mr.  Plumer's  death  in  that  year.  The  "other  house"  was 
Gilston,  the  principal  seat  of  the  Plumers,  some  miles  distant. 
See  notes  on  the  essay  Blakesmoor  hi  Hertfordshire. 

And  then  I  told  hoio,  when  she  came  to  die. — Mrs.  Field  died 
in  the  summer  of  1792,  and  was  buried  in  the  adjoining  church- 
yard of  Widford.  Her  gravestone,  with  the  name  and  date  of 
death,  August  5,  1792,  is  still  to  be  seen,  and  is  one  of  the  few 
tangible  memorials  of  Lamb's  family  history  still  existing.  By 
a  curious  fatality,  it  narrowly  escaped  destruction  in  the  great 


NOTES.  401 

gale  of  October  1881,  when  a  tree  was  blown  down  aLioss  it, 
considerably  reducing  its  proportions. 

John  L. — Of  course  John  Lamb,  the  brother.  "Whether 
Charles  was  ever  a  "lame-footed"  boy,  through  some  tempor- 
arj^  cause,  we  cannot  say.  We  know  that  at  the  time  of  the 
mother's  death  John  Lamb  was  sutferiug  from  an  injury  to  his 
foot,  and  made  it  (after  his  custom)  an  excuse  for  not  exerting 
himself  unduly.  See  tlie  letter  of  Charles  to  Coleridge  -syritten 
at  the  time.  "My  brother,  little  disposed  (I  speak  not  with- 
out tenderness  for  him)  at  any  time  to  take  care  of  old  age  and 
infirmities,  had  now,  with  his  bad  leg,  an  exemption  from  such 
duties." 

/  courted  the  fair  Alice  TV — n. — In  my  memoir  of  Cliarles 
Lamb,  I  hare  given  the  reasons  for  identifying  Alice  W — n 
with  the  Anna  of  the  early  sonnets,  and  again  Avith  the  fonn 
and  featiu'es  of  the  village  maiden  described  as  Rosamund 
Gray.  The  girl  who  is  celebrated  imder  these  various  names 
won  the  heart  of  Charles  Lamb  while  he  was  yet  little  more 
than  a  boy.  He  d.oes  not  care  to  conceal  from  us  that  it  was 
in  Hertfordshire,  while  under  his  gi'andmother's  roof,  that  he 
fii'st  met  her.  The  Beauty  "  with  the  yellow  Hertfordshire  hair 
— so  like  my  Alice,"  is  how-  he  describes  the  portrait  in  the 
picture  gallery  at  Blakesmoor.  Ikloreover,  the  "  winding  wood- 
walks  gi-een  "  where  he  roamed  -with  his  Anna,  can  hardly  be 
unconnected  with  the  "walks  and  windings  of  Blakesmoor," 
apostrophised  at  the  close  of  that  beautiful  essay.  And  there 
is  a  group  of  cottages  called  Blenheim,  not  more  than  half  a 
mile  from  the  site  of  Blakesware  House,  where  the  original 
Anna,  according  to  the  traditions  of  the  village,  resided. 
"Alice  W — n"  is  one  of  Lamb's  deliberate  inventions.  In 
the  key  to  the  initials  employed  by  him  in  his  essays,  he  ex- 
plains that  Alice  W — n  stood  for  Alice  "SVinterton,  but  that  the 
name  was  "feigned."  Anna  was,  in  fact,  the  nearest  clue  to 
the  real  name  that  Lamb  has  vouchsafed.  Her  actual  name 
was,  I  have  the  best  reason  to  believe,  Ann  Simmons.  She 
afterwards  married  Mr.  Bartram,  the  pawnbroker  of  Princes 
Street,  Leicester  Square.  The  complete  history  of  this  episode 
in  Lamb's  life  will  probably  never  come  to  light.  There  are 
many  obvious  reasons  why  any  idea  of  marriage  should  have 
been  indefinitely  abandoned.  The  poverty  in  Lamb's  home  is 
one  such  reason  ;  and  one,  even  more  decisive,  may  have  been 
the  discovery  of  the  taint  of  madness  that  was  inherited,  in 
more  or  less  degree,  by  all  the  children.  Why  Lamb  chose  the 
particular  alias  of  Winterton,  under  M-hich  to  disguise  his  early 
love,  will  never  be  knowni.  It  was  a  name  not  unfamiliar  to 
him,  being  that  of  the  old  steward  in  Colman's  play  of  the  Iron 

2  D 


402  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Chcd,  a  part  created  by  Lamb's  favourite  comedian  Dodd. 
The  play  was  first  acted  in  1796,  about  the  time  when  the  linal 
separation  of  the  lovers  seems  to  have  taken  place. 

In  illustration  of  Lamb's  fondness  for  children,  I  have  the 
pleasure  of  adding  the  following  pretty  letter  to  a  child,  not 
hitherto  printed.  It  was  written  to  a  little  girl  (one  of  twin- 
sisters),  the  daughter  of  Kenney  the  dramatist,  after  Lamb 
and  his  sister's  visit  to  the  Kenneys  at  Versailles  in  Sejitember 
1822.  The  letter  has  been  most  kindly  placed  at  my  disposal 
by  my  friend  Mr.  W.  J.  Jeaffreson,  whose  mother  was  the 
Sophy  of  the  letter.  At  the  close  of  a  short  note  to  Mrs. 
Kenney,  Lamb  adds  : — "  Pray  deliver  what  follows  to  my  dear 
wife,  Sophy : — 

' '  My  dear  Sophy — The  few  short  days  of  connirbial  felicity 
which  I  passed  with  }'ou  among  the  pears  and  apricots  of  Ver- 
sailles were  some  of  the  happiest  of  my  life.     But  they  are  flown ! 

"And  your  other  half,  your  dear  co-twin — that  she-you — 
that  almost  equal  sharer  of  my  affections — you  and  she  are  my 
better  half,  a  quarter  apiece.  She  and  you  are  my  pretty  six- 
pence, you  the  head,  and  she  the  tail.  Sure,  Heaven  that  made 
you  so  alike  must  pardon  the  error  of  an  inconsiderate  moment, 
should  I  for  love  of  you,  love  her  too  well.  Do  you  think  laws 
were  made  for  lovers  ?     I  think  not. 

"Adieu,  amiable  pair. 

' '  Yours,  and  yours, 

"C.  Lamb. 

"  P.S.—\  inclose  half  a  dear  kiss  apiece  for  you." 


DISTANT  CORRESrONDENTS.— P.  142. 

(London  Magazine,  March  1822.) 

B.  i?:— Barron  Field.  Born  October  23,  1786.  He  was 
educated  for  the  Bar  and  practised  for  some  years,  going  the 
Oxford  Circuit.  In  1816  he  married,  and  went  out  to  New 
South  Wales  as  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  at  Sydney.  In 
1824  he  returned  to  England,  having  resigned  his  judgeship  ; 
but  two  or  three  years  afterwards  he  was  appointed  Chief- Justice 
of  Gibraltar.  He  died  at  Torquay  in  1846.  His  brother,  Francis 
John  Field,  was  a  fellow-clerk  of  Charles  Lamb's  at  the  India 
House,  which  was  perhaps  the  origin  of  the  acquaintance, 
jjarron  Field  edited  a  volume  of  papers  {Geographical  Memoirs) 
on  New  South  AVales  for  Murray,  and  the  ai)pendix  contains 
some  short  poems,  entitled  First-Fruils  of  Australian  Poetry. 


NOTES.  403 

Some  papers  of  his  are  to  be  fouiul  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Reflector, 
to  which  Lamb  also  contributed. 

One  of  Mrs.  Roivc's  s^qjerscriptions. — Mrs.  Elizabeth  Kowe 
(1674-1737),  an  exemplary  person,  and  now  forgotten  moralist 
in  verse  and  prose.  Among  other  works  she  ■\\Tote,  Friendship 
in  Death — in  Twenty  Letters  from  the  Dead  to  the  Living.  The 
following  are  from  the  "superscriptions"  of  these  letters:— 
"To  S3'h-ia  from  Alexis;"  "From  Oleander  to  his  Brother, 
endeavouring  to  reclaim  him  from  his  extravagances  ; "  "To 
Emilia  from  Delia,  giving  her  a  description  of  the  invisible 
regions,  and  the  happy  state  of  the  inhabitants  of  Paradise." 

The  late  Lord  C. — The  second  Lord  Camelford,  killed  in  a 
duel  with  Mr.  Best  in  1804.  The  day  before  his  death  he  gave 
directions  that  his  bod}^  should  be  removed  "as  soon  as  may  be 
convenient  to  a  country  far  distant !  to  a  spot  not  near  the 
haunts  of  men,  but  where  the  surrounding  scenery  may  smile 
upon  my  remains.  It  is  situated  on  the  borders  of  the  lake  of 
St.  Lampierre,  in  the  Canton  of  Berne,  and  tliree  trees  stand  in 
the  particular  spot."  The  centre  tree  he  desired  might  be  taken 
up,  and  his  body  being  there  deposited  immediately  replaced. 
At  the  foot  of  this  tree,  his  lordship  added,  he  had  formerly 
passed  many  solitarj^  hours,  contemplating  the  mutability  of 
human  affairs. — Annual  Register  for  1804. 

Aye  me  !  while  thee  the  sects  and  sounding  shores 
Hold  far  aicay. 
— Lycidas,  quoted  incorrectly,  as  usual. 

-/.  TF. — James  White,  Lamb's  schooKellow  at  Christ's  Hos- 
pital.    Died  in  1820. 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.— P.  148. 
{London  Magazine,  May  1822.) 

A  sable  cloitd 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night. 

— Milton,  Comus,  line  223. 

My  pleasant  friend  Jem  White. — .James  Wliite,  a  schoolfellow 
of  Lamb's  at  Christ's  Hospital,  and  the  author  of  a  Shakspearian 
squib,  suggested  by  the  Ireland  Forgeries — "Original  Letters, 
etc.,  of  Sir  Jolm  Falstaff  and  his  friends,  now  iirst  made  public 
by  a  gentleman,  a  descendant  of  Dame  Quickly,  from  genuine 
manuscripts  which  have  been  in  the  possession  of  the  Quickly 
family  near  four  hundred  years."     It  was  published  in  1795, 


404  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

and  Southey  bulieveil  that  Lamb  had  in  sonic  way  a  hand  in  it. 
The  Preface  in  particular  bears  some  traces  of  his  peculiar  vein, 
but  Lamb's  enthusiastic  recommendation  of  the  book  to  his 
friends  seems  to  show  that  it  was  in  the  main  the  production  of 
James  White.  The  jcu  d'esjn-it  is  not  more  successful  than  such 
parodies  usually  are.  White  took  to  journalism,  in  some  form, 
and  was  at  the  time  of  his  death  in  March  1820  an  "agent  of 
Provincial  newspapers. "  His  annual  supper  to  the  little  climb- 
ing-boys was  imitated  by  many  charitable  persons  in  London 
and  other  large  towns. 

Our  trusty  companion,  Bigod. — Lamb's  old  friend  and  editor 
'John  Fenwick,  of  the  Albion.  See  Essay  on  the  Two  Races  of 
Men. 

Golden  lads  and  lasses  viust. 

— Cymbclinc,  Act  iv.  Sc.  2. 

Golden  lads  and  girls  all  must, 

As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust. 

It  is  curious  that  in  this  essay  Lamb  does  not  even  allude  to 
the  gi-ave  subject  of  the  cnielties  incident  to  the  climbing-boys' 
occupation — a  question  which  for  some  years  past  had  attracted 
the  attention  of  philanthropic  persons,  in  and  out  of  Parliament. 
A  year  or  two  later,  however,  he  made  a  characteristic  ofiering 
to  the  cause.  In  1824  James  Montgomery  of  Sheffield  edited  a 
volume  of  Prose  and  Verse — The  Chimney -Swcc2Kr''s  Friend,  and 
Climbing-boy's  Album,  to  which  many  writers  of  the  day  con- 
tributed. Lamb,  who  had  been  applied  to,  sent  Blake's  poem 
—  The  Chimney -Sweeper.  It  was  headed,  "Communicated  by 
Mr.  Charles  Lamb,  from  a  very  rare  and  curious  little  work " 
— doubtless  a  true  description  of  the  Songs  of  Innocence  in 
1824.  It  is  noteworthy  that,  before  sending  it,  this  incorrigible 
joker  could  not  refrain  from  quieth^  altering  Blake's  "  Little  Tom 
Dacre"  into  "Little  Tom  Toddy." 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS, 

IN  TUE   METROPOLIS. — P.   156. 
(London  Magazine,  June  1822.) 

Each  degree  of  it  is  mocked  hy  its   "neighbour  grice."     A 
reference,  apparently,  to  Timon  of  Athens,  iv.  3. 

' '  every  grise  of  fortune 

Is  smoothed  by  that  below." 

Unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne  (1697-1747). — The  "dear  A'inny 
Bourne  "  of  Cowper,  who  had  been  his  pupil  at  Westminster. 


NOTES.  405 

Cowper,  it  will  be  remembered,  translated  many  of  Bourne's 
Latin  verses. 

B ,  the  mild  Rector  of . — In  Lamb's  "Key"  to  the 

Initials,  etc. ,  used  in  bis  essays,  tins  is  aliirmcd  to  1  le  a  (|uite 
imaginary  personage. 

A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.— P.  164. 

{London  Magazine,  September  1S22.) 

The  tradition  as  to  the  origin  of  cooking,  which  is  of  course 
the  salient  feature  of  this  essay,  had  been  communicated  to 
Lamb,  he  here  tells  us,  by  his  friend  M.,  Thomas  Manning, 
whose  acquaintance  he  had  made  long  ago  at  Cambridge,  and 
who  since  those  days  had  spent  much  of  his  life  in  exploring 
China  and  Thibet.  Lamb  says  the  same  thing  in  one  of  his 
private  letters,  so  we  may  accept  it  as  a  literal  fact.  The 
question  therefore  arises  whether  Planning  had  found  the  legend 
existing  in  any  form  in  China,  or  whether  Lamb's  detail  of  the 
Chinese  manuscript  is  wholly  fantastic.  It  is  at  least  certain 
that  the  story  is  a  very  old  one,  and  appears  as  early  as  the 
third  century,  in  the  writings  of  Porphj-ry  of  T>Te.  The  follow- 
ing passage,  a  literal  translation  from  the  Treatise  De  Abstincntid 
of  that  philosopher,  sets  forth  one  fomi  of  the  legend  : — 

"  Asclepiades,  in  his  work  on  Cyprus  and  Phrenice,  writes  as 
follows  : — 'Originally  it  was  not  usual  for  anything  having  life 
to  be  sacrificed  to  the  gods — not  that  there  was  any  law  on  the 
subject,  for  it  was  supposed  to  be  forbidden  by  the  law  of 
nature.  At  a  certain  period,  however  (tradition  says),  when 
blood  was  required  in  atonement  for  blood,  the  first  ■victim  was 
sacrificed,  and  was  entirely  consumed  by  fire.  On  one  occasion, 
in  later  times,  when  a  sacrifice  of  this  kind  was  being  offered, 
and  the  victim  in  process  of  being  burned,  a  morsel  of  its  fiesh 
fell  to  the  ground.  The  priest,  who  was  standing  by,  imme- 
diately picked  it  up,  and  on  removing  Iris  fingers  from  the  burnt 
flesh,  chanced  to  put  them  to  his  mouth,  in  order  to  assuage 
the  pain  of  the  burn.  As  soon  as  he  had  tasted  the  burnt  flesh 
he  conceived  a  strange  longing  to  eat  of  it,  and  accordingly 
began  to  eat  the  flesh  himself,  and  gave  some  to  his  wife  also. 
Pygmalion,  on  hearing  of  it,  directed  that  the  man  and  his  wife 
should  be  put  to  deatli,  b}-  being  hurled  headlong  from  a  rock, 
and  appointed  another  man  to  the  priest's  ottice.  AVhen,  more- 
over, not  long  after  this  man  was  offering  the  same  sacrifice, 
and  in  the  same  way  ate  of  the  flesh,  he  was  sentenced  to  the 
same  pimishment.  When,  however,  the  thing  made  further 
progi-ess,  and  men  continued  to  offer  sacrifice,  and  in  order  to 
gratify  their  appetite  coidd  not  refrain  from  the  flesh,  but 
regularly  adopted  the  habit  of  eating  it,  all  punishment  for  so 
doing  ceased  to  be  inflicted." 


406  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

Maiuiinrj  may  have  been  aware  of  tliis  passage,  and  have  told 
the  story  in  his  own  language  to  Charles  Lamb.  It  is  worth 
noticing  that  in  1823,  the  year  following  the  appearance  of  this 
essay,  Thomas  Taylor,  the  Platonist,  published  a  translation  of 
certain  Treatises  of  Porphyry,  including  the  De  Ahstinentid. 
It  is  possible  that  Manning  may,  on  some  occasion,  have  learned 
the  tradition  from  Taylor. 

Recent  editors  of  Lamb  have  asserted,  without  offering  any 
sufficient  evidence,  that  ho  owed  the  idea  of  this  rlia])Sody  on 
the  Pig  to  an  Italian  Poem,  by  Tigrinio  Bistonio,  published  in 
1761,  at  Modena,  entitled  GIL  "Elogi  del  Porco  (Tigrinio  Pistonio 
was  the  pseudonym  of  the  Abate  Giuseppe  Fei-rari).  Mr.  Richard 
Garnett  of  the  British  Museum,  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for 
calling  ray  attention  to  the  passage  in  Porphyry,  has  kindly 
examined  for  me  the  Italian  poem  in  c|uestion,  and  assures  me 
that  he  can  lind  in  it  no  resemblance  whatever  to  Lamb's  treat- 
ment of  the  same  theme.  There  is  no  affectation  in  Lamb's 
avowal  of  his  fondness  for  this  delicacy.  Towards  the  close 
of  his  life,  however,  Roast  Pig  declined  somewhat  in  his 
favour,  and  was  superseded  by  hare,  and  other  varieties  of 
game.  Indeed  Lamb  was  as  fond  of  game  as  Cowper  was  of 
hsh  ;  and  as  in  Cowper's  case,  his  later  letters  constantly  open 
with  acknowledgments  of  some  recent  offering  of  the  kind  from 
a  good-natured  correspondent. 

Ere  sin  could  blight  or  sorrotv  fade, 
Death  came  with  timely  care. 

-—From  Coleridge's  Epita2)h  on  an  Infant.  It  must  have  been 
with  unusual  glee  that  Lamb  here  borrowed  half  of  his  friend's 
(piatrain.  The  epitaph  had  appeared  in  the  very  earliest  volume 
to  which  he  was  liimself  a  contributor  —  the  little  volume  of 
Coleridge's  j)oems,  published  in  1796,  by  Joseph  Cottle,  of 
Bristol.  The  lines  are  there  allotted  a  whole  page  to  them- 
selves. 

It  ivas  over  London  Bridge.  — The  reader  will  not  fail  to  note 
the  audacious  indiflerence  to  fact  that  makes  Lamb  assert  in  a 
parenthesis  that  his  school  was  on  the  other  side  of  London 
Bridge,  and  that  he  was  afterwards  "at  St.  Omor's. " 


ON  THE  BEHAVIOUR  OF  MARRIED  PEOPLE.— P.  172. 

(London  Mafjazine,  Septeinlier  1S22.) 

The  essay  had  previously  appeared,  in  1811,  in  Leigh  Hunt's 
Mejlector. 


NOTES.  407 

ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.— R  ISO. 

(London  Magazine,  February  1822.) 

This  essay  was  originally  one  of  three  which  appeared  in 
the  London  under  the  title  of  The  Old  Actors.  When  Lamb  col- 
lected and  edited  his  essays  for  xniblication  in  a  volume  in  1823, 
he  abridged  and  rearranged  them  under  different  headings.  Many 
of  Lamb's  favourites,  here  celebrated,  had  died  or  left  the  stage 
almost  before  Lamb  entered  manhood,  showing  how  early  his 
critical  faculty  had  matured. 

Bensley,  whose  performance  of  Malvolio  he  has  analysed  in 
such  a  masterly  way,  retired  from  his  profession  in  1796,  and 
Palmer  in  1798.  Parsons  died  in  1795,  and  Dodd  in  the  autumn 
of  1796,  three  months  after  quitting  the  stage.  Suett  survived 
till  1S05,  and  Mrs.  Jordan  till  1816. 

ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST 

CENTURY.— P.  192. 

(London  Magazine,  April  1822.) 

Originally  the  second  part  of  the  essay  on  The  Old  Actors. 
This  essay  is  noteworthy  as  having  provoked  a  sei'ious  remon- 
strance from  Lord  JIacaulay,  in  reviewing  Leigh  Hunt's  edition 
of  the  Restoration  Dramatists.  Lamb's  apology  for  the  moral 
standards  of  Congreve  and  Wycherley  is  simply  an  exercise  of 
ingenuit)',  or  rather,  as  Hartley  Coleridge  pointed  out,  is  an 
apology  for  himself — Charles  Lamb — who  found  himself  quite 
able  to  enjoy  the  un])aralleled  wit  of  Congreve  ^\'ithout  being  in 
any  way  thrown  off  his  moral  balance.  It  is  in  a  letter  to 
Moxon  on  Leigh  Himt's  proposed  edition  that  Hartley  Cole- 
I'idge's  comment  occurs.  He  ^mtes  :  "  Nothing  more  or  better 
can  be  said  in  defence  of  these  writers  than  what  Lamb  has  said 
in  his  delightful  essay  on  The  Old  Actors ;  which  is,  after  all, 
rather  an  apology  for  the  audiences  who  applauded  and  himself 
who  delighted  in  their  plays,  than  for  the  plays  themselves.  .  .  . 
But  Lamb  always  took  things  by  the  better  handle." 

ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN.— P.  201. 
{London  Magazine,  October  1S22.) 

Cockletop. — In  O'Keefe's  farce  oi  Modern  Antiques ;  or,  The 
Merry  Mourners. 

There  tlic  antic  scde 

Mocking  our  state. 
—A^a^^teii  from.  liichard  XT.,  Act  i^i.,  Sc.  % 


THE   LAST   ESSAYS   OF   ELIA. 


Tfie  Second  Series  of  Elia  was  published  in  a  collected  form  by 
Mr.  Moxon  in  1833.  It  was  furnished  with  a  Preface,  jturport- 
ing  to  be  written  by  "a  friend  of  the  late  Elia,"  announcing 
his  death,  and  commenting  freely  on  his  character  and  habits. 
This  Preface  (written,  of  course,  by  Lamb  himself)  is  placed  in 
the  present  edition  at  the  beginning  of  the  volume.  Elia  is 
here  supposed  to  have  died  in  the  interval  between  the  publica- 
tion of  the  First  and  Second  Series.  From  the  opening  sentences 
we  should  conclude  that  it  was  at  first  intended  as  a  postscript 
to  the  First  Series,  and  indeed  it  originally  appeared  in  the 
London  Magazine  for  January  1823.  But  this  design,  if  ever 
entertained,  was  not  carried  out. 

I  have  spoken  in  my  Introduction  of  the  estimate  here 
pronounced  by  Lamb  himself  on  his  own  writings,  as  in  my 
memoir  of  Lamb  I  had  occasion  to  deal  with  the  same  Preface 
as  throwing  light  on  the  causes  of  his  unpopularity.  In  each 
case  he  shows  a  rare  degree  of  self-knowledge.  If  they  stood 
alone  they  would  entirely  account  for  Carlyle's  harsh  verdict. 
"Few  professed  literati  were  of  his  councils,"  and  he  would  be 
little  disposed  to  show  the  serious  side  of  himself,  still  less  the 
better  side  of  his  humour,  to  such  as  Carlylc.  To  the  evidence 
of  such  friends  as  Hood,  Patniore,  and  Procter,  confirming 
Lamb's  own  account,  I  may  here  add  a  piece  of  fresh  testimony 
from  Hazlitt.  It  occurs  in  the  essay  "On  CoH'ee-House  Politi- 
cians," one  of  the  Tahlc-Talk  series  : — 

"  I  will,  however,  admit  that  the  said  Elia  is  the  worst  com- 
pany in  the  world  in  bad  company,  if  it  be  granted  me  that  in 
good  company  he  is  nearly  the  best  that  can  be.  He  is  one  of 
those  of  whom  it  may  be  said,  Tell  me  your  comjM^iy  and  Til  tell 
you,  yoitr  manners.  He  is  tlie  creature  of  sympathy,  and  makes 
good  whatever  opinion  you  seem  to  entertain  of  him.  He  can- 
not outgo  tlie  apprehensions  of  the  circle,  and  invariably  acts 
up  or  down  to  the  point  of  refinement  or  vulgarity  at  which 
they  pitch  him.  He  appears  to  take  a  pleasure  in  exaggerating 
the  prejudices  of  strangers  against  him,  a  pride  in  confirming 


NOTES.  409 

the  prepossessions  of  friends.  Jn  Mhatever  seale  of  intellect  he 
is  placed,  he  is  as  lively  or  as  stujnd  as  the  rest  can  be  for  their 
lives.  If  you  think  him  odd  and  ridiculous,  he  becomes  more 
and  more  so  every  minute,  a  la,  folic,  till  he  is  a  wonder  gazed 
at  l)y  all.  Set  him  against  a  good  wit  and  a  ready  apprehension, 
and  he  brightens  more  and  more — 

'  Or  like  a  gate  of  steel 
Fronting  the  sun,  receives  aud  renders  back 
Its  fiarure  and  its  heat.'  " 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE.— P.  205. 

(London  Magazine,  September  1824.) 

Blakesmoor,  as  has  been  already  observed,  was  lUakesware, 
a  dower-house  of  the  Plumers,  about  live  miles  from  Ware,  in 
Hertfordshire.  If  there  were  ever  any  doubt  on  the  subject, 
Lamb's  own  words  are  decisive.  In  a  letter  to  Bernard  Barton, 
of  August  10,  1827,  occurs  the  following  charming  passage : — 
"You  have  Avell  described  your  old -fashioned  paternal  "hall. 
Is  it  not  odd  that  every  one's  recollections  are  of  some  such 
place?  I  liad  my  Blakesware  ('Blakesmoor'  in  the  Zondon). 
Nothing  fills  a  child's  mind  like  a  large  old  mansion,  better  if 
un-  or  partially-occupied  :  peopled  with  the  spirits  of  deceased 
members  of  the  county  and  justices  of  the  Quorum.  Would  I 
were  buried  in  the  peopled  solitudes  of  one  with  my  feelings  at 
seven  years  old  !  Those  marble  busts  of  the  emperors,  they 
seemed  as  if  they  were  to  stand  for  ever,  as  they  had  stood 
from  the  living  days  of  Rome,  in  that  old  marble  hall,  and  I  to 
partake  of  their  permanency.  Eternity  was,  while  I  thought 
not  of  time.  But  he  thought  of  me,  and  they  are  toppled 
down,  and  corn  covers  the  spot  of  the  noble  old  dwelling  and 
its  princely  gardens.  I  feel  like  a  grassho2:)per  that,  chirping 
about  the  grounds,  escaped  the  scythe  only  by  my  littleness. " 

In  face  of  this  letter,  it  might  seem  strange  that  most  of 
Lamb's  editors  have  unhesitatingly  asserted  tliat  the  original 
of  Lamb's  Blakesmoor  was  Gilston,  the  other  seat  of  the 
Plumers,  near  Harlow,  in  the  same  county.  The  origin  of  the 
mistake  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  Plumer  property, 
after  the  death  of  Mr.  William  Plumer,  the  member  for  Higham 
Ferrers,  in  1822.  ]\Ir.  Plumer  died  without  children,  and  left 
his  estates  at  Blakesware  and  Gilston  to  his  widow.  The  house 
at  Blakesware,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  partially  dis- 
mantled in  Mr.  Plumer's  lifetime,  was  now  pulled  to  the  ground 
— its  principal  contents  having  been  already  removed  to  the 


no  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ETJA. 

otliiT  Iionso  ;it  Gilston.  It  was  after  its  final  demolition  that 
Laiub  paid  the  visit  here  recorded,  to  look  oiiec  more  on  the 
remains  of  a  jilace  associated  with  so  many  happy  memories. 
The  widow,  Airs.  Plumer,  not  long  after  her  first  husband's 
death,  married  Commander  Lewin  of  the  Royal  Navy,  and 
finally,  after  his  death,  married  for  the  third  time,  in  1828,  Mr. 
Ward,  autlior  of  the  once  popular  novel  Trcmainc.  On  marrying 
Mrs.  Plumer  Lewin  Mr.  Ward  received  the  royal  permission  to 
take  and  use  the  name  of  Plumer  as  a  prefix  to  that  of  Ward. 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Plumer  Ward  continued  to  live  at  the  family 
residence  of  the  Plumers  at  GiLston. 

Mr.  P.  G.  Patmore  —  the  father  of  the  present  Jlr.  Coventry 
Patmore— made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Plumer  Ward  in  1824, 
and  in  a  book,  entitled  My  Friends  and  Acquaintance,  pub- 
lished in  1854,  gave  an  interesting  account  of  Mr.  Ward, 
together  with  a  full  description,  supplied  by  that  gentleman 
himself,  of  the  furniture  and  general  arrangements  of,  Gilston 
House.  Among  these  appear  the  Twelve  Cfesars  and  the 
Marble  Hall,  and  other  features  of  the  old  house  at  Blakesware, 
familiar  to  readers  of  Charles  Lamb,  which  had  been  in  fact 
removed  from  the  one  house  to  the  other.  Mr.  Patmore,  ap- 
parently ignorant  of  the  existence  of  any  other  residence  belong- 
ing to  the  Plumers,  at  once  assumed  that  Gilston  had  been  the 
house  celebrated  by  Lamb,  and  announced  the  discovery  with 
some  natural  exultation.  From  that  time  Mr.  Patmore's  version 
of  the  facts  has  been  generally  accepted.  Gilston  House  was 
pulled  down  in  1851.  The  contents,  except  such  as  were  used 
for  the  new  house  erected  at  a  short  distance,  were  sold  by 
auction.  The  Twelve  Cffisars,  and  many  other  things,  went  to 
AVardour  Street. 

Nothing  remains  of  Blakesware  save  the  "  firry  mlderness  " 
and  the  faint  undulations  in  the  grassy  meadow,  where  the 
ample  pleasure  garden  rose  backwards  in  triple  terraces.  But 
the  rural  tranquillity  of  the  surroimding  country  is  still  un- 
changed, and  tliat  depth  and  warmth  of  colouring  in  the  foliage 
that  gives  to  the  Hertfordshire  landscape  a  character  all  its 
own.  It  is  a  day  well  spent  to  make  an  excursion  from  the 
country  town  of  Ware,  and  wander  over  the  site  of  the  old 
place,  and  among  the  graves  of  Widford  churchyard.  It  will 
be  felt  then  how,  with  this  "cockney  of  cockneys,"  the  beauty 
of  an  English  home — a  "haunt  of  ancient  peace  " — had  passed 
into  his  life  and  become  a  part  of  his  genius  and  himself. 

/  was  the  true  dcscoulant  of  those  old  11' s. — Lamb  dis- 
guises the  family  of  Plumer  under  this  change  of  initial.  He 
certainly  did  not  mean  the  Wards  —  Mr.  Ward  not  having 
become  connected  with  the  family  of  Plumer  till  several  years 
later  than  the  date;  of  this  essay. 


NOTES.  4 1 1 

■      So  like  my  Alice  /—See  notes  on  Dream.  Children  in  the  first 
series  of  the  essays. 

Compare  with  this  essay  Mary  Lamb's  story  of  "the  Young 
Mahomedan  "  in  Mrs.  Leicester's  Selioul.  Blakesware  is  there 
again  described,  as  rememljered  by  Mary  Lamb  when  a  child. 

POOR  RELATIONS.— P.  210. 
{Lmulon  Magazine,  May  1S23.) 

rdchard  Amlet,  Esq.,  in  the  play.— ^ca  Vanbrngh's  comedy, 
The  Confederacy. 

Poor  W . — Tlie  Favell  of  the  essay,  Chrvit's  Hospital  Five- 

and-thirty  Years  Ago.  Lamb,  in  his  "  Key  "  to  the  initials  used  by 
him,  has  written  against  the  initial  F.,  there  employed  :  "Favell 
left  Cambridge,  because  he  was  asham'd  of  his  father,  who  was 
a  house -painter  there."  He  was  a  Grecian  in  the  school  in 
Lamb's  time,  and  when  at  Cambridge  wrote  to  the  Duke  of 
York  for  a  commission  in  the  army,  which  was  sent  him. 
Lamb  here  changes  both  his  friend's  name  and  his  University. 

Like  Satan,  "knew  his  mounted _  siepi — and  fled." — See  the 
concluding  lines  of  Paradise  Lost,  Book  iv.,  of  which  this  is 
a  more  than  usually  free  adaptation.  Li  the  incident  referred 
to,  the  angel  Gabriel  and  Satan  are  on  the  point  of  engaging  in 
struggle,  when 

"  The  Eternal,  to  prevent  such  horrid  fray, 
Hung  forth  in  heaven  his  golden  scales." 

Satan's  attention  being  called  to  the  sight, 

" The  fiend  looked  up,  and  knew 

His  mounted  scale  aloft :  nor  more  :  but  tied 
Murmuring,  and  with  him  fled  the  shades  of  night." 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING. 

—P.  218. 

{London  Magazine,  July  ISS'2.) 

The  ivretched  Malonc. — This  happened  in  1793,  on  occasion 
of  Malone's  visit  to  Stratford  to  examine  the  municipal  and 
other  records  of  that  town,  for  the  purposes  of  his  edition  of 
Shakspeare. 

Martin  B . — ]\Iartin   Charles  Burney,    the   only  son  of 

Admiral  Burney,  and  one  of  Lamb's  life-long  friends.  Lamb 
dedicated  to  hiiii  the  secoiid.  volume  of  liis  collected  writings  m 


412  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

1818  in  a  prefatory  sonnet,  in  which  he  says— 

"  In  all  my  threadings  of  this  worldly  maze 
(And  I  have  watched  thee  almost  from  a  child), 
Free  from  self-seeking,  envy,  low  design, 
I  have  not  found  a  whiter  soul  than  thine." 

]\Iartin  Burney  was  originally  an  attorney,  but  left  that 
brancli  of  the  profession  for  the  Bar,  where,  however,  he  was 
not  successful.     Mr.  Burney  died  in  Loudon  in  1852. 

A  quaint  ■poetess  of  o^ir  day. — Mary  Lamb.  The  lines  will 
be  found  in  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb's  Poetry  for  Children. 


STAGE  ILLUSION.— P.  22.5. 
(Lo7idon  Magazine,  August  1S25.) 

TO  THE  SHADE  OF  ELLISTON.— R  229. 
{Englishman's  Magazine,  August  1S31.) 

U})  thither  like  aerial  vapours  fly. 

■ — A  parody  of  the  well-known  description  of  the  Limbo  of 
Vanity  in  tlu'  third  book  of  the  Paradise  Lust. 


ELLISTONIANA.— P.  231. 

(Englishman's  Magazine,  August  1S31.) 

G.  D. — George  Dyer. 

Sir  A C . — Sir  Anthony  Carlisle,  the  surgeon. 

These  two  papers  were  prompted  by  the  death  of  the  popular 
comedian  iu  July  18:31. 

THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.— P.  237. 
{London  Magazine,  July  1823.) 

Charles  and  IMar}-  Lamb  had  actually,  as  here  stated,  passed  a 
week's  holiday  together  at  Margate,  when  the  former  was  quite 
a  boy.  In  his  early  days  of  authorship  Charles  had  utilised  the 
experience  for  a  sonnet,  one  of  the  first  he  published — "written 
at  midnight  by  the  sea-side  after  a  voyage."  It  is  amusing  to 
note  these  two  different  treatments  of  the  same  theme  : — 


NOTES.  1 1 3 

"  0  winged  bark  !  how  swift  along  the  night 
Passed  thy  proud  keel  ;  nor  shall  I  let  go  by 
Lightly  of  that  dread  hour  the  memory, 
When  wet  and  chilly  on  thy  deck  I  stood 
Uubonneted,  and  gazed  upon  the  flood." 

"For  many  a  day,  and  many  a  dreadfxd  night, 
Incessant  labouring  round  the  stormy  Cape." 
■ — Thomson's  Seasons — "  Summer,"  1.  1002. 

"Be  hit  as  buggs  tofearen  bales  xvitluil, 
Compared  loith  the  creatures  in  the  sea's  cntral." 
— Spenser,  Fairy  Queen,  Book  ii.  Canto  xii. 

"  The  daughters  of  Cheapsidc  and  wives  of  Lombard  Street." — 
Imperfectly  remembered  from  the  Ode  to  Master  Anthony  Stafford, 
by  Thomas  Randolph  (1605-1635)  :— 

There  from  the  tree 
We'll  cherries  jiluck,  and  pick  the  strawberry  ; 

And  every  day 
Go  see  the  wholesome  country  girls  make  hay, 

Whose  brown  hath  lovelier  grace 

Tlian  any  painted  face 

That  I  do  know 

Hyde  Park  can  show. 
Where  I  had  rather  gain  a  kiss  than  meet 

(Though  some  of  them  in  greater  state 

Might  court  my  love  with  plate) 
The  beauties  of  the  Cheap,  and  wives  of  Lombard  Street. 


THE  CONVALESCENT.— P.  246. 
{London  Magazine,  July  1825.) 

Lamb  had  an  illness  of  the  kind  here  described  in  the  winter 
of  1824-25,  and  the  condition  in  w^hich  it  left  him  seems  to 
have  been  one  of  the  causes  of  his  proposed  retirement  from  the 
India  House.  As  w'itli  all  the  other  essays  which  savour  of  the 
autobiographical,  the  freshness  and  precision  of  the  experience 
is  one  of  its  great  charms. 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS.— P.  251. 
(Xeiv  MoniMy  Magazine,  May  1826.) 

"  So  strong  a  wit,"  says  Cowley. — From  Cowley's  fine  lines — 
a  true  "  In  Memoriani  " — O71  the  death  of  Mr.  William  Hervey. 


414  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

Tlir,  common  i'un  of  Lane's  novels. —  Better  known  as  tlie 
novels  of  the  Minerva  Press,  from  which  Lane  the  pnhlisher 
issued  innumerable  works. 

That  wonderful  ejnsode  of  the  Cave  of  Mammon.  — See  Fairy 
Queen,  Book  ii.  Canto  vii.,  the  Legend  of  Sir  Guyon. 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.— P.  254. 
(London  Magazine,  November  1824.) 

It  has  been  suggested  that  this  exquisite  character  -  sketch 
may  have  been  taken  from  Lamb's  old  friend  Mr.  Randal  Norris, 
of  the  Inner  Temple.  An  obvious  objection  to  this  theory — 
that  Mr.  Norris  was  still  living  when  the  sketch  appeared  (he 
did  not  die  till  1827) — is  not  so  conclusive  as  it  might  seem. 
Lamb  was  in  the  habit  of  describing  living  persons  with  a 
surprising  frankness.  The  accoimt  of  James  Elia,  for  example, 
in  3fy  Relations,  was  written  and  published  in  his  brother's 
lifetime.  Mr.  Norris  had  two  daughters,  and  although  Sub- 
Treasurer  to  the  Inner  Temple,  was  never  apparently  in  very 
flourishing  circumstances.  The  very  unlikeness  of  most  of  the 
incidents  here  recorded  to  those  of  Randal  Norris's  actual  life,  is 
quite  after  Lamb's  custom.  Mr.  Norris  lived  and  died  in  the 
Temple  ;  he  was  not  "steeped  in  poverty  to  the  lijis,"  and  his 
wife  was  not  a  Scotchwoman,  but  a  native  of  Widford,  in 
Hertfordshire,  and  a  friend  of  old  Mrs.  Field.  Lamb  may  have 
introduced  the  significant  reference  to  the  wedding-day  on 
purpose  to  amuse  his  sister.  When  Randal  Norris  was  married 
(his  daughter  tells  me)  Mary  Lamb  was  bridesmaid,  and  the 
happy  pair,  in  company  with  Miss  Lamb,  spent  the  day  together 
at  Richmond. 

When  we  came  doivn  through  Glasgow  town. 

— From  the  beautiful  old  ballad,  a  special  favourite  with  Lamb, 

"  Waly,  waly,  up  the  bank. 
And  waly,  waly,  down  the  brae." 

THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.— P.  259. 

{London  Magazine,  May  1825). 

An  account,  substantially  true  to  facts,  of  Lamb's  retirement 
from  the  India  House.  This  event  occurred  on  the  last  Tuesday 
of  il  arch  1825,  and  Lamb,  after  his  custom,  proceeded  to  make 
it  a  subject  for  his  next  essay  of  Elia.  He  here  transforms  the 
directors  of  the  India  House  into  a  private  firm  of  merchants. 
The    names    Boldero,    Merryweather,    and    the    others,    were 


NOTES.  -1 1 5 

not  those  of  directors  of  the  conipanj'  at  the  time  of  Laiiib's 
retirement.  Lamb  retired  on  a  pension  of  £450,  being  two- 
thirds  of  his  salary  at  that  date.  Kine  pounds  a  year  were 
deducted  to  assure  a  pension  to  JIary  Lamb  in  the  event  of  her 
surviving  her  brother.  "  Here  am  I,"  writes  Charles  to  AVords- 
worth  .shortly  afterwards,  "after  thirty-three  year.s'  slavery, 
sitting  in  my  own  room  at  eleven  o'clock,  this  finest  of  all  April 
mornings,  a'freed  man,  with  £441  a  year  for  the  remainder  of 
my  life,  live  I  as  long  as  John  Dennis,  who  outlived  his  annuity 
and  starved  at  ninety. " 

tliaCs  horn  and  lias  his  years  come  to  liim, 

In  some  green  desert. 

— Inaccurately  quoted  from  iliddleton's  Mayor  of  Qucenhoro', 
Act  i.  Sc.  1.     It  should  be  "  in  a  rough  desart." 

A  Tragedy  hy  Sir  Rohert  Howard. — The  lines  are  from  llie 
Vestal  Virgin,  or  the  RoinoM  Ladies,  Act  v.  Sc.  1.  Sir  Robert 
Howard  (1626-169S)  was  Dryden's  brother-in-law,  and  joint 
author  with  him  of  the  Indian  Queen. 

As  loio  as  to  the  fiends.- — From  the  dramatic  fragment,  con- 
cerning Priam's  slaughter,  declaimed  by  the  player  in  Hamlet. 

Of  Lamb's  fellow-clerks  in  the  India  House,  referred  to  here 

by  their  initials,  Ch was  a  Mr.  Chambers,  PI was  "W. 

D.  Plumley,  the  son  of  a  silversmith  in  Cornhill,  and  Do a 

Mr.  Henry  Dodwell,  evidently  one  of  Lamb's  most  intimate 
friends  inthe  office.  Their  names  occur  together  in  an  unpub- 
lished letter  of  Lamb's  to  Mr.  Dodwell,  now  lying  before  me. 
It  is  addressed  "  H.  Dodwell,  Esq.,  India  House,  London.  (In 
his  absence  may  be  opened  by  Mr.  Chambers.)  "  The  letter  is 
so  characteristic  that  I  may  be  allowed  to  cjuote  some  passages. 
It  is  written  from  Calne  in  Wiltshire,  where  Lamb  was  spending 
his  summer  holiday,  in  July  1816  : — 

"  My  dear  Fellow — I  have  been  in  a  lethargy  this  long  while 
and  forgotten  London,  Westminster,  Marybone,  Paddiugton  ; 
tliey  all  went  clean  out  of  my  head,  till  happening  to  go  to 
a  neighbour's  in  this  good  borough  of  Calne,  for  want  of  whist- 
players  we  fell  upon  Commerce.  The  word  awoke  me  to  a  re- 
membrance of  my  professional  avocations  and  the  long-continued 
strife  which  I  have  been  these  twenty-four  years  endeavouring 
to  compose  between  those  gi-and  Irreconcileables — Cash  and  Com- 
merce. I  instantly  called  for  an  almanack,  which,  with  some 
difficulty  was  procured  at  a  fortune-teller's  in  the  \'icinity  (for 
the  happy  holiday  people  here  having  nothing  to  do  keep  no 
account  of  time),  and  found  that  by  dint  of  duty  I  must  attend 
in  Leadeuhall  on  Wednesday  morning  next,  and  shall  attend 


416  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

accordin.i^ly.  .  .  .  Adieu!  Yc  fields,  ye  shepherds  and — lierdesses, 
and  dailies  and  cream-pots,  and  fairies,  and  dances  upon  the  gi-een. 
I  come  !  I  come  !  Don't  drag  me  so  hard  by  the  hair  of  my 
head.  Genius  of  British  India  !  I  know  my  hour  is  come — • 
Faustus  must  give  uji  his  soul,  0  Lucifer,  0  Mephistopheles  ! 
Can  you  make  "out  wliat  all  this  letter  is  about  ?  I  am  afraid 
to  look  it  over.  Ch.  Lamb. 

"Calne,  Wilts.  Friday,  July  something,  Old  Style,  1816. 
No  new  style  here — all  the  styles  are  old,  and  some  of  the  gates 
too  for  that  matter." 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.— P.  267. 

(Xew  Monthly  Maijuzlnc,  March  1S26.) 

This  essay,  as  originally  published,  formed  one  of  the  series 
o{  Poimlar  Fallacies — with  the  title,  "That  my  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury and  Sir  William  Tempde  are  models  of  the  Genteel  Style 
of  Writing. " 

My  Lord  Shaftesbury. — Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  the  third 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  and  author  of  the  Characteristics.  In  his 
essay  on  Books  and  Heading  Lamb  had  said,  "  I  can  read  any- 
thing which  I  call  a  hook.  Shaftesbury  is  not  too  genteel  for 
me,  nor  Jonathan  Wild  too  low."  The  essays  of  Temple  here 
cited  are  those  Of  Gardening,  Of  Health  and  Long  Life,  The 
Cure  of  the  Gout  by  Moxa,  and  Of  Poetry. 


BARBARA  S ^.— P.  272. 

(London  Magazine,  April  1S25.) 

The  note  appended  by  Lamb  to  this  essay,  as  to  the  heroine 
being  named  Street,  and  having  three  times  changed  her  name 
by  successive  marriages,  is  one  of  the  most  elaborate  of  his 
fictions.  The  real  heroine  of  the  story,  as  admitted  by  Lamb 
at  the  time,  was  the  admirable  comedian,  Fanny  Kelly,  an 
attached  friend  of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,  who  has  just  died 
(December  1882)  at  the  advanced  age  of  ninety-two.  In  the 
year  1875  Miss  Kelly  furnished  Mr.  Charles  Kent,  who  was 
editing  the  centenary  edition  of  Lamb's  works,  with  her  own 
interesting  version  of  the  anecdote.  It  was  in  1799,  when 
Fanny  Kelly  was  a  child  of  nine,  that  the  incident  occurred, 
not  at  the  old  ISatli  Theatre,  but  at  Drury  Lane,  where  she  had 
licen  admitted  as  a  "miniature  chorister,"  at  a  salary  of  a  i)ound 
a  week.  After  his  manner,  Lamb  has  changed  every  detail — 
the  heroine,  the  site  of  the  theatre,  the  amount  of  the  salary, 


NOTES.  417 

the  name  of  the  treasurer.  Even  following  Charles  Lamb,  Miss 
Kelly  has  told  her  own  story  with  much  graphics  power. 

Miss  Kelly,  with  the  "divine  plain  face,"  was  a  special 
favourite  of  Lamb's.  See  his  sonnets  "To  Miss  Kelly,"  and 
"To  a  celebrated  female  performer  in  The  Blind  Boy." 

She  would  have  done  the  elder  child  in  Morton's  pathetic  after- 
liiece  to  the  life. — This  is  an  ingenious  way  of  intimating  that 
Miss  Kelly  did  play  the  elder  child  in  the  Children  in  the  JVood. 
The  drama  was  first  produced  in  1793.  The  incident  of  the 
roast-fowl  and  the  spilt  salt,  recorded  later  on,  occurs  in  the 
last  scene  of  this  play.  The  famished  children,  just  rescued  from 
the  wood,  are  fed  by  the  faithful  Walter  with  a  roast-chicken, 
over  which  he  has  just  before,  in  his  agitation,  upset  the  salt-box. 

When  she  used  to  2)lay  the  part  of  the  Little  Son  to  Mrs. 
Porter's  Isabella. — See  Crabb  Robinson's  version  of  this  anecdote 
{Diaries,  iii.  19). — "  She  (Miss  Kelly)  related  that  when,  as  Con- 
stance, Mrs.  Siddons  wept  over  her,  her  collar  was  wet  with 
Mrs.  Siddons's  tears. " 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY.— P.  278. 
{London  Magazine,  October  1S23.) 

The  concluding  paragraphs  of  Lamb's  letter  to  Southey, 
remonstrating  with  him  for  his  remarks  upon  certain  character- 
istics of  Lamb's  writings.  The  Quarterly  lieview  for  January 
1823  contained  an  article  by  Southey  on  Bishop  Gregoire  and 
the  spread  of  the  Theo  -  philanthropists  in  France.  The  first 
series  of  Elia  was  then  on  the  point  of  being  published  in  book 
form,  and  Southey  thought  to  do  the  book  a  good  turn  by  pay- 
ing it  an  incidental  compliment.  Having  to  deal  with  the 
spread  of  free-thought  in  England,  Southey  went  on  to  say  that 
unbelief  might  rob  men  of  hope,  but  could  not  banish  their 
fears.  "There  is  a  remarkable  proof  of  this,"  he  added,  "in 
Ella's  essays,  a  book  which  wants  only  a  sounder  religious 
feeling,  to  "be  as  delightful  as  it  is  original,"  and  proceeded  to 
quote  from  the  essay  on  Witches  and  other  Night  Fears  Lamb's 
account  of  the  nervous  terrors  of  "dear  little  T.  H." — knowni 
to  be  Thornton  Hunt,  Leigh  Hunt's  eldest  boy.  The  moral 
drawn  by  Southey  may  be  easily  guessed.  These  nervous  terrors 
were  the  natural  result  of  the  absence  of  definite  Christian 
teaching  in  the  systems  of  Leigh  Hunt  and  others  of  the  Radical 
set. 

Lamb  was  hurt  by  the  attack  on  himself,  but  still  more  by 

the  reflections  on  his  friends  ;  and  the  greater  part  of  his  letter 

is  employed  in  defending  Leigh  Hunt  and  William  Hazlitt. 

The  breach  with  Southey  was  soon  healed,  and  the  old  affec- 

2E 


418  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA. 

tionato  intercourse  renewed.  If  only  for  this  reason,  it  is 
intelligible  why  Lamb  did  not  care  to  reproduce  the  entire 
letter  when  he  published  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia  in  a  collected 
form.  I  have  dealt  with  the  subject  at  some  length  in  my 
memoir  of  Lamb. 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS.— P.  281. 
(London  Magazine,  December  1823.) 

For  an  account  of  G.  D. — George  Dyer — see  notes  to  the 
essay,  Oxford  in  the  Vacation.  The  incident  had  actually 
occurred  a  few  weeks  only  before  the  date  of  this  essay.  Mr. 
Procter  supplements  the  account  hei-e  given  with  some  amusing 
particulars: — "I  happened  to  go  to  Lamb's  house,  about  an 
hour  after  his  rescue  and  restoration  to  dry  land,  and  met  Miss 
Lamb  in  the  passage  in  a  state  of  great  alarm  ;  she  was  whim- 
pering, and  could  only  utter,  '  Poor  Mr.  Dyer  !  Poor  Mr.  Dyer  ! ' 
in  tremulous  tones.  I  went  upstaii'S,  aghast,  and  found  that 
the  involuntary  diver  had  been  placed  in  bed,  and  that  Miss 
Lamb  had  administered  brandy  and  water,  as  a  well-established 
preventive  against  cold.  Dyer,  unaccustomed  to  any  thing  stronger 
than  the  'crystal  spring,'  was  sitting  upright  in  the  bed  per- 
fectly delirious.  His  hair  had  been  rubbed  up,  and  stood  out 
like  so  many  needles  of  iron-gray.  '  I  soon  found  out  where  I 
was,'  he  cried  out  to  me,  laughing  ;  and  then  he  went  wander- 
ing on,  his  words  taking  flight  into  regions  where  no  one  could 
follow." 

And  could  such  spacious  virtue  find  a  grave. 

— Lamb  had  headed  this  essay  with  an  appropriate  quotation 
from  Milton's  Lycidas.  He  now  cites  a  less  famous  poem  from 
the  collection  of  tributary  verse  in  which  Lycidas  made  its  first 
appearance — the  little  volume  of  Elegies  on  the  death  of  Edward 
King,  published  at  Cambridge  in  1638.  The  couplet  here  quoted 
is  from  the  contribution  to  this  volume  by  John  Cleveland,  the 
Cavalier.      It  runs  thus  in  the  original : — 

' '  But  can  his  spacious  vertue  find  a  grave 
Within  th'  imposthumed  bubble  of  a  wave." 

The  sweet  lyrist  of  Peter  Mouse. — The  poet  Gray. 

The  mild  Aslcetc. — Anthony  Askew,  M.D. — See  Byer's  Poems, 
1801,  p.  156  (note) : — "  Dr.  Anthony  Askew,  formerly  a  physician 
in  London,  once  of  Emmanuel  College,  well  known  in  this  and 
foreign  countries  for  his  acquaintance  with  Greek  literature,  and 
his  valuable  collection  of  Greek  books  and  MSS.  :  a  particular 
friend  and  patron  of  the  author's  early  youth." 


NOTES.  419 

SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY.— P.  286. 
(London  Magazine,  September  ISiIS.) 

In  the  year  1820  "William  Hazlitt  delivered  a  course  of 
lectures  at  the  Surrey  Institution  on  the  Literature  of  the  Age 
of  Elizabeth.  In  the  sixth  lecture  of  the  course  he  dealt,  among 
other  writers',  \vith  Sidney,  on  whose  Arcadia  he  made  an 
elaborate  onslaught.  "It  is  to  me,"  he  says,  "one  of  the 
greatest  monuments  of  the  abuse  of  intellectual  power  upon 
record.  It  puts  one  in  mind  of  the  Court  dresses  and  preposter- 
ous fashions  of  the  time,  which  are  grown  obsolete  and  disgust- 
ing. It  is  not  romantic,  but  scholastic ;  not  poetry,  but 
casuistry  ;  not  nature,  but  art,  and  the  worst  sort  of  art,  which 
thinks  it  can  do  better  than  nature.  Of  the  number  of  fine 
things  that  are  constantly  passing  through  the  author's  mind, 
there  is  hardly  one  that  he  has  not  contrived  to  spoil,  and  to 
spoil  purposely  and  maliciously,  in  order  to  aggrandise  our  idea 
of  himself" — with  much  more  in  the  same  strain.  In  the  course 
of  his  remarks  he  describes  the  sonnets  inlaid  in  the  Arcadia  as 
"jejune,  far-fetched,  and  frigid,"  the  verj'  words  cited  by  Lamb 
in  his  essay  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  Hazlitt's  lecture  was  the 
immediate  cause  of  the  present  paper. 

It  is  a  lesson  of  high  value  to  contrast  Lamb's  and  Hazlitt's 
estimate  of  Sidney.  Hazlitt  possessed  acuteness,  wide  reading, 
and  had  command  of  an  excellent  style,  but  he  was  (through 
political  bias,  among  other  causes,  as  Lamb  suggests)  out  of 
sympathy  with  his  subject.  Moreover,  Lamb  was  a  poet.  His 
few  sentences  beginning,  "  But  they  are  not  rich  in  words  only," 
are  truer  and  more  satisfying  than  the  whole  of  Hazlitt's  minute 
analysis. 

I  am  afraid  some  of  his  addresses  {"ad  Leonoram"  I  Diean) 
have  rather  erred  on  the  other  side. — Cowper  translated  most  of 
Milton's  Latin  poems  in  skilful  intimation  of  the  Miltonic  verse. 
It  is  significant  that  he  "drew  the  line"  at  this  exorbitant 
piece  of  flattery,  which  remains  untranslated  by  him. 

Lord  Oxford. — The  "foolish  nobleman,"  just  before  men- 
tioned. Sidney  was  grossly  insulted  by  the  young  earl  in  a 
tennis-court,  where  they  had  met  for  play.  According  to 
Fulke  Greville,  the  earl  called  Sidney  "  a  puppy  " — the  "  oppro- 
brious thing  "  alluded  to  by  Lamb.  It  is  worth  noting  that  two 
centuries  later  another  earl  (Horace  Walpole)  made  an  equally 
memorable  and  insolent  attack  upon  Sidney.  See  the  notice  of 
Fulke  Greville  in  "Walpole's  Royal  and  Noble  Authors. 

There  is  a  touching  incident  associating  Lamb's  last  days 
with  those  of  Sidney.  The  last  letter  written  by  Lamb  before 
the  fatal  issue  of  his  accident  was  to  Mrs.  George  Dyer,  con- 


420  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELI  A. 

cerning  the  safety  of  a  certain  liook  belonging  to  Mr.  Gary  of 
the  British  Jluseuni,  wliich  Lamb  had  left  by  accident  at  her 
house.  The  book  was  the  Thcatrmn  Podarum  of  Edward 
Philli[)s,  MiltoTi's  nephew.  On  the  recovery  of  the  volume  it 
was  found  that  the  page  was  turned  down  at  the  notice  of 
rhilip  Sidney.  It  was  on  this  incident  that  Gary  wrote  his 
charming  lines  : — 

"  So  should  it  be,  my  gentle  friend  ; 
Thy  leaf  last  closed  at  Sidney's  end. 
Thou  too,  like  Sidney,  would'st  have  given 
The  water,  thirsting,  and  near  Heaven  ; 
Nay,  were  it  wine,  lill'd  to  the  brim, 
Thou  hadst  looked  hard — but  given,  like  him." 

NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.— P.  295. 
{Englishman's  Magazine,  October  1S31.) 

The  title  of  this  essay  was  first  given  to  it  when  it  appeared 
in  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia  in  1833.  The  date,  therefore,  to 
which  it  refers  is  the  year  1798,  or  thereabouts.  Lamb's  con- 
nection with  the  newspaper  world  began  even  earlier  than  this. 
He  seems  to  have  owed  his  first  introduction  to  it  to  Ooleridge, 
who  piiblished  some  of  his  own  earliest  verse  in  the  columns  of 
the  Morning  Chronicle.  Coleridge  was  contributing  sonnets  to 
this  paper  as  early  as  the  year  1794,  and  among  them  appeared 
Lamb's  sonnet  (jjcrhaps  a  joint  composition  with  his  friend)  on 
Mrs.  Siddons.  After  this  period,  until  Goleridge's  return  from 
Germany  at  the  end  of  1799,  we  have  no  means  of  tracing 
Lamb's  hand  in  the  newspapers  ;  but  from  1800  to  1803  frequent 
mention  is  made  in  Lamb's  correspondence  of  his  employment 
in  the  capacity  described  in  this  essay.  It  was  his  time  of 
greatest  poverty  and  struggle,  when  the  addition  of  an  extra 
fifty  pounds  a  year  to  his  income  was  of  the  greatest  importance. 
Coleridge  appears  to  have  introduced  Lamb  to  Daniel  Stuart, 
the  editor  of  the  Mornincj  Post.  He  was  writing  in  the  same 
year  for  the  Albion,  the  final  collapse  of  which,  by  the  help  of 
Lamb's  epigram,  is  here  described.  "  The  Albion  is  dead,"  he 
writes  to  Manning  on  this  occasion,  "dead  as  nail  in  door — my 
revenues  have  died  with  it ;  but  I  am  not  as  a  man  without 
hope."  He  had  now  got  an  introduction,  through  his  friend 
George  Dyer,  to  the  Morni7ig  Chronicle,  under  the  editorship  of 
Perry.  In  1802  he  was  trying  an  entirely  new  line  of  writing 
in  the  Morninrf  Post — turning  into  verse  prose  translations  of 
German  poems  supplied  by  Coleridge.  A  specimen  of  Lamb's 
work  of  this  kind  has  been  preserved — Thekla's  song  in  Wallcn- 
stein.  "As  to  the  translations,"  he  writes  to  Coleridge,  "let 
mo  do  two  or  three  hundred  lines,  and  then  do  you  try  the 


NOTES.  421 

nostrums  i;pon  Stuart  in  any  waj'  you  please."  His  connection 
with  tlie  newspapers  came  to  an  end  in  1803.  "  I  have  given 
up  two  guineas  a  week  at  the  Post,"  he  wiites  to  Manning, 
"and  regained  my  health  and  spirits,  which  were  ujion  the 
wane.  I  grew  sick,  and  Stuart  unsatisfied.  Liisisti  satis, 
tempus  abire  est.     I  must  cut  closer,  that's  all." 

Daniel  Stuart — who  lived  till  1846 — published  in  the  Gcntlc- 
mu7i's  Magazine  for  June  1838  an  account  of  his  dealings  \n.t\x 
Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Lamb.  It  is  amusing  to  hear  the 
other  .side  of  the  storj'.  He  says,  "  As  for  good  Charles  Lamb, 
I  could  never  make  anything  of  his  ^\Titings.  Coleridge  re- 
peatedly pressed  me  to  settle  him  on  a  salary,  but  it  would  not 
do.  Of  politics  he  knew  nothing  ;  and  his  drollery  was  vapid 
when  given  in  short  paragraphs  for  a  newspaper."  Certainly 
no  style  was  ever  less  titted  for  joui'ualism,  in  any  department, 
than  Lamb's. 

Boh  Allen — oiir  quondam  schoolfellow. — He  was  a  Grecian  at 
Christ's  Hos]ntal  in  Lamb's  time.  See  the  story  of  him,  and 
his  handsome  face,  in  the  essay  on  the  Blue  Coat  School. 

John  Fcmvick.  — The  Ralph  Bigod  of  the  essay,  Th£  Two  Races 
of  Men. 

An  unlucky,  or  rather  lucky,  epigram  from  our  2JCn. — The 
alleged  apostasy  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  consisted  in  his 
having  accepted,  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Addington,  the  office  of 
Recorder  of  Bombay  in  1S04.  His  Vindicice  Gallkce  were  pub- 
lished in  1791.     Lamb's  epigi-am  was  the  following  : — 

' '  Though  thou'rt  like  Judas,  an  apostate  black, 
In  the  resemblance  one  thing  dost  thou  lack  ; 
\\Tien  he  had  gotten  his  ill-purchased  pelf, 
lie  went  away,  and  wisely  hang'd  himself : 
This  thou  may  do  at  last,  yet  much  I  doubt 
If  thou  hast  any  bowels  to  gush  out  !" 


BARRENNESS  OF  THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN 
THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.— P.  303. 

(T7ic  Athenmim,  .January  and  February  1S33.) 

Aprojjos  of  what  Lamb  writes  in  this  essay  on  the  Titian  in 
the  National  Gallery,  it  is  not  unamusing  to  find  the  following 
sentence  in  a  letter  to  Wordsworth  of  IMay  1833  : — 

"  Thank  you  for  your  cordial  reception  of  Elia.  Inter  nos,  the 
'  Ariadne '  is  not  a  darling  with  me  ;  several  incongruous  things 
are  in  it,  but  in  the  composition  it  served  me  as  illustrative." 


422  THE   ESSAYS   OF   ELIA. 

THE  WEDDING.— P.  315. 

{London  Magazine,  June  1825.) 

Sarah  Barney,  the  daughter  of  Admiral  Burney,  married 
her  cou.sin  John  Payne  in  April  1821,  and  her  father  died  in 
Noveml)er  of  the  same  year.  Her  age  was  between  twenty - 
seven  and  twenty  -  eiglit.  This  is  the  foundation  of  fact  on 
which  this  idyllic  little  story  is  built  up.  It  is  at  least  a  curiou.s 
coincidence  that,  when  Lamb  revised  the  essay  for  the  Last 
Assays  of  Ella,  he  was  himself  looking  forward  to  a  bereave- 
ment strictly  parallel  to  that  of  the  old  admiral.  He  and 
]\Iary  were  about  to  lose,  by  marriage,  one  who  had  been  to 
them  as  an  only  child.  Emma  Isola  married  Mr.  Moxon  in 
July  1833.  Lamb  might  indeed  have  said  of  himself,  "He 
bears  bravely  up,  but  he  does  not  come  out  with  his  flashes  of 
wild  wit  so  thick  as  formerly  ...  the  youthfulness  of  the 
house  is  flown. "  Did  he  perchance  remember,  as  he  quoted  his 
favourite  Marvell,  that  the  poet  was  bidding  good-bye^  to  one 
who  had  been  his  pupil,  as  Emma  Isola  had  been  Lamb's  1  In 
the  lines  on  Appleton  House,  Marvell  predicts  the  marriage  of 
Mary  Fairfax — 

"  While  her  glad  parents  most  rejoice, 
Awl  make  their  destiny  their  choice." 


REJOICINGS  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING 
OF  AGE.— P.  321. 

{London  Magaziiir,  .January  1823.) 

OLD  CHINA.— P.  327. 
{London  Magazine,  March  1823.) 

This  beautiful  essay  tells  its  own  story— this  time,  we  may 
be  sure,  without  romance  or  exaggeration  of  any  kind.  It  is  a 
contribution  of  singular  interest  to  our  understanding  of  the 
happier  days  of  Charles  and  Mary's  united  life. 

Dancing  the  hays. — The  hays  .was  an  old  English  dance, 
involving  some  intricate  figures.  It  seems  to  have  been  known 
in  England  up  to  fifty  years  ago.  The  dance  is  often  referred 
to  in  the  writers  whom  Lamb  most  loved.  Herrick,  for  ex- 
ample, has — 

"  On  lioly-dayes,  wlien  Virgins  meet 
To  dance  the  Heyes,  with  nimble  feet." 


NOTES.  423 

THE  CHILD  ANGEL;  A  DREAM.— P.  333. 

{London  Magazine,  June  1S23.) 

Thomas  Moore's  Loves  of  the  Angels  had  appeared  in  the  year 
1823.  Lamb,  as  we  may  ■well  believe,  was  not  in  general 
attracted  to  this  poet,  but  there  were  reasons  why  this  parti- 
cular poem  may  have  been  an  exception  to  the  rule.  It  was 
based  upon  the  translation  in  the  Septuagint  of  the  second  verse 
in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Genesis — -"Angels  of  God"  instead  of 
"  Sons  of  God."  "  In  addition  to  the  fitness  of  the  subject  for 
poetry,"  Moore  writes  in  his  preface,  "it  struck  me  also  as  capable 
of  affording  an  allegorical  medium,  through  which  might  be 
shadowed  out  the  fall  of  the  soul  from  its  original  purity — the 
loss  of  light  and  happiness  which  it  suffers  in  the  pursuit  of  this 
world's  perishable  pleasures — and  the  punishments,  both  from 
conscience  and  Divine  justice,  with  which  impurity,  pride,  and 
presumptuous  inquiry  into  the  awful  secrets  of  God  are  sure  to 
be  visited."  This  vein  of  thought  had  a  strange  fascination  for 
Lamb,  as  we  know  from  his  reflections  in  New  Year's  Eve,  and 
his  beautiful  sonnet  on  Innocence.  The  topic,  in  short,  may 
have  attracted  him,  rather  than  Jloore's  fluent  verse  and  boudoir 
metaph3'sics.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  he  meant  his  sequel 
to  the  poem  to  be  in  any  sense  an  allegory.  It  is  probably 
fantastic  merelJ^ 

CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.— P.  336. 
(London  Magazine,  August  1S22.) 

In  the  j'ear  1814  Basil  Montagu  compiled  a  volume  of  mis- 
cellaneoiLS  extracts  on  the  subject  of  temperance,  under  the  title 
Stnae  Enquirits  into  the  Effects  of  Fermented  Liquor's.  By  n 
JVatcr  Drinker.  The  contents  were  taken  from  the  writings  of 
physicians,  divines,  poets,  essayists  and  others  who  had  pleaded 
the  temperance  cause.  The  volume  was  arranged  in  sections, 
and  to  that  headed  Do  Fermented  Liquors  contribute  to  Moral 
Excellence  ?  Lamb  furnished  (of  course  anonymously)  his  Co7i- 
fessions  of  a  DricnJcard.  It  was  illustrated  by  an  outline 
engraving  of  the  Correggio  dra^^^ng  so  powerfully  described  in 
the  essay.     A  second  edition  of  the  book  appeared  in  1818. 

In  the  Quarterly  Remciv  for  April  1822  appeared  an  article 
on  Dr.  Reid's  treatise  on  Jlypochondriasis  and  other  Nervous 
Affections.  These  Confessions  of  a  Drnnhard  were  there  referred 
to,  as  "a  fearful  picture  of  the  consequences  of  intemperance," 
which  the  reviewer  went  on  to  say,  "  we  have  reason  to  know 
is  a  true  tale.''  I  may  be  allowed  to  finish  the  story  in  words 
used  by  me  elsewhere.     "  In  order  to  give  the  author  the  oppor- 


424  THE  ESSAYS   OF   ELIA. 

tunity  of  contradicting  this  statement,  the  paper  was  reprinted 
in  the  Loiulon  in  the  following  August,  under  the  signature  of 
Elia.  To  it  were  appended  a  few  words  of  remonstrance  with 
the  Quarterly  reviewer  for  assuming  the  literal  truthfulness  of 
these  confessions,  but  accompanied  with  certain  significant 
admissions  that  showed  Lamb  had  no  right  to  be  seriously 
indignant.  'It  is  indeed,'  he  writes,  'a  compound  extracted 
out  of  his  long  observation  of  the  effects  of  drinking  upon  all 
the  world  about  him  ;  and  this  accumulated  mass  of  misery  he 
hath  centred  (as  the  custom  is  with  judicious  essayists)  in  a 
single  figure.  We  deny  not  that  a  portion  of  his  owm  experiences 
may  have  passed  into  the  picture  (as  who,  that  is  not  a  washy 
fellow,  but  must  at  some  time  have  felt  the  after-operation  of  a 
too  generous  cup  ?) ;  but  then  how  heightened !  how  exaggerated  ! 
how  little  within  the  sense  of  the  review,  when  a  part  in  their 
slanderous  usage  must  be  understood  to  stand  for  the  whole.' 
The  truth  is  that  Lamb,  in  writing  his  tract,  had  been  playing 
with  edge-tools,  and  could  hardly  have  complained  if  they  turned 
against  himself.  It  would  be  those  who  knew  Lamb,  or  at  least 
the  circumstances  of  his  life,  best,  who  would  be  most  likely  to 
accept  these  confessions  as  true."  There  is,  in  short,  a  thread 
of  fact  running  through  this  paper,  though  with  exaggerations 
and  additions  in  abundance.  The  reference  to  the  excessive 
indulgence  in  smoking  we  have  too  good  reason  for  accepting 
as  genuine.  When  some  one  watched  him  persistently  emit 
dense  volumes  of  smoke  during  the  greater  part  of  an  evening, 
and  asked  him  how  he  had  contrived  to  do  it,  he  answered,  "I 
toiled  after  it,  sir,  as  some  men  toil  after  virtue."  Compare  his 
Ode  to  Tobacco. 

■ and  not  undo  'cm 

To  suffer  wet  damnation  to  run  thro'  ^em. 

From  the  Revenger's  Tragedy,  by  Cyril  Tourneur.    Vindici  is 
addressing  the  skull  of  his  dead  lady  : — 
"  Here's  an  eye. 
Able  to  tempt  a  great  man — to  serve  God  ; 
A  pretty  hanging  lip,  that  has  forgot  how  to  dissemble. 
Metbinks  this  mouth  .should  make  a  swearer  tremble  ; 
A  drunkard  clasp  his  teeth,  and  not  undo  'em, 
To  suffer  wet  damnation  to  run  through  'em. " 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.— P.  346. 
(The  New  Monthly  Magazine,  January  to  September  1S2C.) 

La)nb  writes  to  AVordsworth  in  1S33,  when  the  volume  was 
newly  out : — "  I  want  you  in  the  Popular  Fallacies  to  like  the 
'  home  that  is  no  home,'  and  '  rising  with  the  lark.' "    The  former 


NOTES.  425 

of  tliese  naturally  interested  T>amb  deeply,  for  it  contains  a 
hardly-disguised  account  of  his  own  struggles  with  the  crowd  of 
loungers  and  good-natured  friends  who  intruded  on  his  leisure 
hours,  and  hindered  his  reading  and  writing.  There  is  little  to 
call  for  a  note  in  these  papers.  The  pun  of  Swift's  criticised — 
with  rare  acumen — in  the  Fallacy,  "that  the  worst  puns  are 
the  best,"  was  on  a  lady's  mantua  dragging  to  the  ground  a 
Cremona  violin.     Swift  is  said  to  have  quoted  Virgil's  line — 

"  Mantua  vae  miserie  nimium  viciua  Cremonas." 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  Clark,  Limited,  Edinburgh. 


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